The noble virgin, whom he had first dishonored, scarcely as yet a boy, pointed with bloody fingers to the deep self-inflicted wound, which yawned in her snowy bosom.
The vestal, who had broken through all bounds of virtue, piety, and honor, sacrificed soul and body to his unpitying lust, gazed at him with that unearthly terror in her eyes, which glared from them as they looked their last at earth and heaven, when she descended, young and lovely, into a living grave.
The son, whom he had poisoned, to render his house vacant for unhallowed nuptials, with his whole frame convulsed in agony, and the sardonic grin of death on his writhing lips, frowned on him.
His brother, who had drawn life from the same soft bosom, but whose kindred blood had pleaded vainly against the fratricidal dagger, frowned on him.
His sister's husband, that mild and blameless knight, whose last breath was spent in words of peace and pardon to his slayer, now frowned on him.
The stern impassive face of Marius Gratidianus, unmoved alike by agony or insult, frowned on him, in the serene dignity of sustaining virtue.
Men of all ranks and ages, done to death by his hand or his head, by poison, by the knife, by drowning, by starvation—women deceived or violated, and then murdered, while their kisses were yet warm on his lips—infants tortured to death in the very wantonness of cruelty, and crime that must have been nigh akin to madness, gibbered, and glared upon him.
These things would seem impossible, they are in truth incredible, but they are true beyond the possibility of cavil.
He was indeed one of those unaccountable and extraordinary monsters, who, thanks to nature! appear but once in many ages, to whom sin is dear for its own naked self, to whom butchery[8] is a pastime, and blood and agonies and tears a pleasurable excitement to their mad morbid appetites.
And in this hour of downfall, one by one, did his fancy conjure up before him the victims of his merciless love, his merciless hatred—both alike, sure and deadly.