A Servant of Satan: Romantic Career of Prado the Assassin — page 142: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

134 kh SERVANT OF SATAN, heads touched the floor. They wore the most artistic of dresses, with huge sashes of a soft rich color. In their hands they bore several native instruments of music, includ- ing a “koto,” a kind of horizontal harp: or zither; a ~“*samasin,” or banjo, and a ‘‘yokobuc,” or flute. The _ fair musicians, still kneeling on the floor, began to play and to sing a strangely weird but somewhat exciting melody. Meanwhile other handmaidens, scarcely less richly dressed than the first, made their appearance, carrying costly lacquer trays with egg-shell porcelain cups containing slices of the feelers of the octopus, or devil-fish, wonderfully con- _ trived soups, oranges preserved in sirups, and various other extraordinary confections. At first both Nina and Freder- ick made fruitless attempts to convey the viands to their mouths by means of the chop-sticks which had been placed before them, but soon, following the example of their host, they overcame this difficulty by raising the cups to their lips and gulping down the contents. Then came the most dainty morsel of the feast, which is to the Japanese epicure. what fresh oysters and Russian _ sterlet are to us. Resting on a large dish of priceless Kioto porcelain, garnished with a wreath of variegated bamboo leaves, was a magnificent fish of the turbot species. It was still alive, for its gills and its mouth moved regularly. - To Nina’s horror, the serving girl raised the skin from the upper side of the fish, which was already loose, and picked off slice after slice of the living creature, which, although alive, had been carved in such a manner that no vital part had been touched; the heart, gills, liver, and stomach had been left intact, and the damp sea-weed — on which the fish rested sufficed to keep the lungs in action. ' The miserable thing seemed to look with a lustrous but re- proachful eye upon the guests while they consumed its body. ‘To be buried alive is horrible enough in all con- science, but to be eaten alive must be even still worse. It cComicbooks.co