At the word I seized a slave of the palace, attempting to escape. He begged hard for his life, and promised to conduct us where the procurator was concealed. We hurried on through a succession of winding passages; a strong door stopped us.
“There,” said the slave.
“By the beard of my fathers, the wolf shall not be long in his den!” cried the son of El Hakim. “Procurator, your last crime is committed.”
He threw himself against the door with prodigious force; the bars burst away, and before us lay the terror of Judea.
He was to be a terror no more. A cup, the inseparable amethystine cup, stood on the table beside his couch. He lay writhing in pain. His countenance wore the ghastliest hue of death. I bade him surrender. He smiled, took the cup in his trembling hand, and eagerly swallowed the remaining drops in its bottom.
“What! poison!” exclaimed my companion; “has the villain escaped me? Here is my planet again; never was man so unlucky. But he is not dead yet.”
He drew his falchion, and lifted it up with the look of one about to offer a solemn sacrifice. I seized his arm.
“He is dying,” said I; “he is beyond earthly vengeance.”
The wretched criminal before us was nearly insensible to his brief preservation. The poison, acting upon a frame already broken with public and private anxieties, was making quick work, and the glazed eye, the fallen countenance, and the collapsed limb showed that his last hour was come.