'
At the truth flashing in upon me through these fantastic lies, I had
passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate's awards
can draw from the victim no loud lamentations--when there are no
frantic blows aimed at the sufferer's own poor eyeballs till the
beard--like the self-mutilated Theban king's--is bedewed with a dark
hail-shower of blood. More terrible because more inhuman than the
agony imagined by the great tragic poet is that most awful condition
of the soul into which I had passed--when the cruelty that seems to
work at Nature's heart, and to vitalise a dark universe of pain,
loses its mysterious aspect and becomes a mockery; when the whole
vast and merciless scheme seems too monstrous to be confronted save
by mad peals of derisive laughter--that dreadful laughter which
bubbles lower than the fount of tears--that laughter which is the
heart's last language; when no words can give it the relief of
utterance--no words, nor wails, nor moans.
'Another quid,' bawled the woman after me, as I turned away, 'another
quid, an' then I'll tell you somethink to your awantage.
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