The groan which he uttered as the first symptom of returning sensation had something in it so terrific, that even the revellers were awed into momentary silence; and as, from the half recumbent posture in which he had gone to sleep, he looked around the room, filled with fantastic shapes, rendered still more so by his disturbed intellects, he muttered to himself: "It is thus, then, after all, and the legend is true! These are fiends, and I am condemned for ever! The fire is not external, but I feel it--I feel it at my heart--burning as if the seven times heated furnace were doing its work within!" While he cast ghastly looks around him, and struggled to recover some share of recollection, Eviot approached the Prince, and, falling on his knees, implored him to allow the apartment to be cleared.
"It may," he said, "cost my master his life." "Never fear, Cheviot," replied the Duke of Rothsay; "were he at the gates of death, here is what should make the fiends relinquish their prey.

Advance the calabash, my masters." "It is death for him to taste it in his present state," said Eviot: "if he drinks wine he dies." "Some one must drink it for him--he shall be cured vicariously; and may our great Dan Bacchus deign to Sir John Ramorny the comfort, the elevation of heart, the lubrication of lungs, and lightness of fancy, which are his choicest gifts, while the faithful follower, who quaffs in his stead, shall have the qualms, the sickness, the racking of the nerves, the dimness of the eyes, and the throbbing of the brain, with which our great master qualifies gifts which would else make us too like the gods.

What say you, Eviot?
will you be the faithful follower that will quaff in your lord's behalf, and as his representative?
Do this, and we will hold ourselves contented to depart, for, methinks, our subject doth look something ghastly." "I would do anything in my slight power," said Eviot, "to save my master from a draught which may be his death, and your Grace from the sense that you had occasioned it.

But here is one who will perform the feat of goodwill, and thank your Highness to boot." "Whom have we here ?" said the Prince, "a butcher, and I think fresh from his office.

Do butchers ply their craft on Fastern's Eve?
Foh, how he smells of blood!" This was spoken of Bonthron, who, partly surprised at the tumult in the house, where he had expected to find all dark and silent, and partly stupid through the wine which the wretch had drunk in great quantities, stood in the threshold of the door, staring at the scene before him, with his buff coat splashed with blood, and a bloody axe in his hand, exhibiting a ghastly and disgusting spectacle to the revellers, who felt, though they could not tell why, fear as well as dislike at his presence.
As they approached the calabash to this ungainly and truculent looking savage, and as he extended a hand soiled as it seemed with blood, to grasp it, the Prince called out: "Downstairs with him! let not the wretch drink in our presence; find him some other vessel than our holy calabash, the emblem of our revels: a swine's trough were best, if it could be come by.