He felt that he might go mad; and he would have gone mad beyond doubt, had not vengeance remained to him.

But as hitherto he had thought that he could not live unless he got Lygia, he thought now that he would not die till he had avenged her.

This gave him a certain kind of comfort.

"I will be thy Cassius Chaerea!" [The slayer of Caligula] said he to himself in thinking of Nero.

After a while, seizing earth in his hands from the flower vases surrounding the impluvium, he made a dreadful vow to Erebus, Hecate, and his own household lares, that he would have vengeance.
And he received a sort of consolation.