Both in countenance and manner the elegant voluptuary of our former acquaintance at the Court of Ravenna was entirely and fatally changed.

Of the other eight patricians who lay on the couches around their altered host--some wild and reckless, some gloomy and imbecile--all had suffered in the ordeal of the siege, the famine, and the pestilence, like him.
Such were the members of the assemblage, represented from the ceiling by nine of the burning lamps.

The tenth and last lamp indicated the presence of one more guest who reclined a little apart from the rest.
This man was hump-backed; his gaunt, bony features were repulsively disproportioned to his puny frame, which looked doubly contemptible, enveloped as it was in an ample tawdry robe.

Sprung from the lowest ranks of the populace, he had gradually forced himself into the favour of his superiors by his skill in coarse mimicry, and his readiness in ministering to the worst vices of all who would employ him.

Having lost the greater part of his patrons during the siege, finding himself abandoned to starvation on all sides, he had now, as a last resource, obtained permission to participate in the Banquet of Famine, to enliven it by a final exhibition of his buffoonery, and to die with his masters, as he had lived with them--the slave, the parasite, and the imitator of the lowest of their vices and the worst of their crimes.
At the commencement of the orgie, little was audible beyond the clash of the wine-cups, the low occasional whispering of the revellers, and the confused voices of the people without, floating through the window from the street.