The next instant his fixed features were suddenly distorted, his whole frame collapsed as if torn by an internal spasm--he fell back heavily to the floor.

Those around approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms.
His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it; the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the great despot, Crime--'Be free!' 'We have heard the note of the swan singing its own funeral hymn!' said the patrician Placidus, looking in maudlin pity from the corpse of the boy to the face of Vetranio, which presented for the moment an involuntary expression of grief and remorse.
'Our miracle of beauty and boy-god of melody has departed before us to the Elysian fields!' muttered the hunchback Reburrus, in harsh, sarcastic accents.
Then, during the short silence that ensued, the voices from the street, joined on this occasion to a noise of approaching footsteps on the pavement, became again distinctly audible in the banqueting-hall.
'News! news!' cried these fresh auxiliaries of the horde already assembled before the palace.

'Keep together, you who still care for your lives! Solitary citizens have been lured by strange men into desolate streets, and never seen again! Jars of newly salted flesh, which there were no beasts left in the city to supply, have been found in a butcher's shop! Keep together! Keep together!' 'No cannibals among the mob shall pollute the body of my poor boy!' cried Vetranio, rousing himself from his short lethargy of grief.

'Ho! Thascius! Marcus! you who can yet stand! let us bear him to the funeral pile! He has died first--his ashes shall be first consumed!' The two patricians arose as the senator spoke, and aided him in carrying the body to the lower end of the room, where it was laid across the table, beneath the black curtain, and between the heaps of drapery and furniture piled up against each of the walls.

Then, as his guests reeled back to their places, Vetranio, remaining by the side of the corpse, and seizing in his unsteady hands a small vase of wine, exclaimed in tones of fierce exultation: 'The hour has come--the Banquet of Famine has ended--the Banquet of Death has begun! A health to the guest behind the curtain! Fill--drink--behold!' He drank deeply from the vase as he ceased, and drew aside the black drapery above him.