Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/324

 strove blindly, madly, to get away and throw himself on Este; but he could see nothing, he could hear nothing, for the rush of blood in his brain; the darkness over him grew denser and blacker, the sense of suffocation grew worse, he thought the hands of a hundred men were at his throat; then, like the carcase of a slaughtered bull, his body slipped from those who had seized him, and he fell face forward on the floor.

He breathed a few times with labour, but his brain was already dead; soon the trunk and the limbs were dead also. The silver image that Joconda had given to him still hung about his throat.

So he perished, unpitied, unassoilised, and they let him lie like carrion, and to be like carrion carted to the streets.