Angelo threw himself on the ground with cries of injustice, and an equally angry person started up from his corner. "What is he screaming about? Has he the only feelings to be considered? Do I thus weep like a woman? I, too, have a brother in a dark prison—and if I were with him I would be more safe! While that one there slobbers do I wish to die? And to thus make a martyr not only of me, but of that holy soul, my mother! Who, at eighty-four would weep for me and tear her sacred hair, all gray!" A chorus of sympathetic wails responded to this touching reference. "Me, I see in this room one who once took my lock of that hair for another woman's!" Hisses arose. "Yet do I ask to leave the room? Let it be the house of Pascoe which forever leaves this room. Rather than meet in the dark with the agent of the Honorable Society I will surrender me to the police!"
This, indeed, achieved tumult, breaking into personal rancors in which the issue of Nicola seemed to vanish.
"You are a liar! He did not—"
"I will swear on the ashes of my father and of my dead son!"
"You would swear on anything!"
"Beware! Beware the anathema!"
"I am sorry for you—I take you to my bosom!"
"I curse you down to the seventh generation!"
"Once you dug, quiet, in my sewer! But now you are proud and a gentleman—"
"I was always more of a gentleman than you are!"