The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 107: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

90 REYNOLDS’ WORKS Christina, with a shudder; “ and though many of them were but the detailed repetition of much that we knew before — ”’ “Yet it is horrible for you, my dear young friends,’’ added the queen, compassionatingly, as she looked upon the twins, ‘“‘ to hear them in this elaborate and minute form.” Sagoonah at this moment reéntered the room, bringing with her that small leathern case, or bag, which had served her purpose for the transport of the cobra di capello from the Zoological Gardens to the villa. It was of Hindu manufac- ture, and we have already described it as being large enough to contain a small rabbit. It had a cover which lapped over the mouth and was fastened with a button. Sagoonah had been up to her own chamber to fetch it. ‘‘ Here,’’ she exclaimed, as she reéntered the apartment where she had left the queen and the twins, ‘‘ here is the instrument which served my accursed purpose on that dread day.” Then, in the same vehement and impassioned. strain, she went on to describe how she had captured the cobra in the leathern case, and how she suffered it to escape thence into the couch of her mistress. ‘The twins shuddered with a cold horror, as if the actual proceeding itself were being now realized in their presence, and even the strong-minded Indora could not repel a similar sensation, though there was in her mind a deep feeling of thankfulness to Heaven for the manner in which she had escaped from the hideous peril. “Yes,” continued Sagoonah, displaying the leathern case with a species of frenzy, “‘ it was this that brought the deadly reptile hither. Oh, would that it had darted its coils around my arm and plunged its fangs into my flesh! What remorse would have now been spared: me! Wretch, wretch that I have been! But I swear to you, lady, that such is now my self-loathing, so intense is the abhorrence with which I now regard myself, so sick and wearied am I of life, that were the envenomed reptile still within this case, I would plunge in my hand. Thus, thus would I plunge it in, and if the serpent ‘were torpid, I would excite it into its fullest and most terrible vitality. I would court its sting, and I would se thankful that I had the power so soon to perish.’’ As she thus spoke with impassioned and almost frenzied vehemency, Sagoonah tore open the lapping cover of the ease, and thrust in her hand. It was no mere stage-perform- Gomiuicbdoc 6S (E()