Page:Pierre.djvu/348

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334
PIERRE

'Fighting Gladiator it is!' yelled Pierre, leaping toward him like Spartacus. But the savage impulse in him was restrained by the alarmed female shrieks and wild gestures around him. As he paused, several gentlemen made motions to pinion him; but shaking them off fiercely, he stood erect, and isolated for an instant, and fastening his glance upon his still reclining, and apparently unmoved cousin, thus spoke:

'Glendinning Stanly, thou disown'st Pierre not so abhorrently as Pierre does thee. By heaven, had I a knife, Glen, I could prick thee on the spot; let out all thy Glendinning blood, and then sew up the vile remainder. Hound, and base blot upon the general humanity!'

'This is very extraordinary:—remarkable case of combined imposture and insanity; but where are the servants? why don't that black advance? Lead him out, my good Doc, lead him out. Carefully, carefully! stay'—putting his hand in his pocket—'there, take that, and have the poor fellow driven off somewhere.'

Bolting his rage in him, as impossible to be sated by any conduct, in such a place, Pierre now turned, sprang down the stairs, and fled the house.

III

'Hack, sir? Hack, sir? Hack, sir?'

'Cab, sir? Cab, sir? Cab, sir?'

'This way, sir! This way, sir! This way, sir!'

'He's a rogue! Not him! he's a rogue!'

Pierre was surrounded by a crowd of contending hack-men, all holding long whips in their hands; while others eagerly beckoned to him from their boxes, where they sat elevated between their two coach-lamps like shabby, discarded saints. The whip-stalks thickened around him,