And he, an aristocrat of aristocrats, dirty and dishevelled, rubbed shoulders with the scourings of the gutter, shouted their shouts, echoed their exultation. At first the grim humour of the thing smote him in grosser farcical fashion; but the mood was not for long. He remembered Malise, whimpering and quivering in his arms; he remembered the body dragged about the square and worried by dogs; he remembered the carcase swinging by the rope; he remembered the dripping heads and the fragments of flesh tossed about by the maddened and intoxicated mob. It was then that his eyes grew hot with shame and his blood ran like lava through his veins. It was then that the spirit of a vampire rushed into his heart, and that he swore great solemn oaths by all the bones and relics of the saints. God give him a hale body out of Gilderoy, and this city scum should be scourged with iron and roasted by fire.
He got across the square by dint of his noisy hypocrisy, and turned morosely into a dark alley that led towards the walls. Hot-hearted gentleman, the mere panic-stricken thirst for existence had cooled out of him, and he was in a fine, rendering passion to his finger-tips, a striding, blasphemous temper, that longed to take the whole city by the throat and beat a fist in its bloated face. He wondered what had become of his knights, esquires, and men-at-arms. It was told him in later days how they died fighting in the abbey refectory, died with the Benedictines at their side, and a rare barrier of corpses to tell of the swing of their swords.
Flavian dodged into a dark porch to consider his circumstances and the baffling influence of the same. He had caught enough from the mob to comprehend what had occurred, and what was to follow. Certainly for many months he had heard rumours, but, like other demigods, he had turned a deaf ear and smiled like a Saturn. The largeness of the upheaval stupefied him at first; now, as he pondered it, it gave a more heroic colour to his passions.
To be free of Gilderoy: that was the necessity. He guessed shrewdly enough that the gates would be well guarded. And the walls! He smote his thigh and remembered where the river coursed round the rocky foundations, and washed the walls. A big plunge, a swim, and he would have liberty enough and to spare.