The stare of death was in his face as he half-raised himself and for one instant looked steadily on his companion; the moment after, without word or groan, he dropped backward over his couch.
The contest of the night was decided! The host of the banquet and the master of the palace had been reserved to end the one and to fire the other! A smile of malignant triumph parted Vetranio's lips as he now arose and extinguished the last lamp burning besides his own.

That done, he grasped the torch.

His eyes, as he raised it, wandered dreamily over the array of his treasures, and the forms of his dead or insensible fellow-patricians around him, to be consumed by his act in annihilating fire.

The sensation of his solemn night-solitude in his fated palace began to work in vivid and varying impressions on his mind, which was partially recovering some portion of its wonted acuteness, under the bodily reaction now produced in him by the very extravagance of the night's excess.

His memory began to retrace confusedly the scenes with which the dwelling that he was about to destroy had been connected at distant or at recent periods.