The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 280: what you’re looking at

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

REVELATIONS OF THE MONSTER-MAN — 249 wanted. Yes, the peace-officer it was: and fortunate was it that his grief was so absorbing as to prevent him from taking any notice of me, or else he might have recognized me, despite my sailor’s apparel. Mingling with the spectators, I learned that it was the peace-officer’s own father whose remains had just been committed to the ground. Oh! at that moment all hell seemed to flame up and rage in my bosom; terrible thoughts took possession of my brain, tremendous ideas began floating vaguely about in my imagination, as mon- strous serpents would seem in the depths of the green sea waters. Shuddering at the appalling promptings which were beginning to influence me, goaded to frenzy by my own thoughts, and endeavouring to outstrip them, I fled from the place. ‘‘For three or four days, however, I haunted the neigh- bourhood, circling as it were about that lonely churchyard, as a vulture flies around and around the carcass on which it is about to pounce, each time narrowing the circumference of its whirl. At last the fearful ideas which were agitating in my brain seemed to combine all their force, concentrate all their power, and act as a tremendous spell upon me. A violent headache, a cruelly painful nervousness, an audible beating of the heart, and a fever-heat all over my body, — these were now the principal symptoms of the frightful monomania that was gaining so appalling an ascendancy over me. It was an impulsive insanity which I could not resist, a frenzy exercising an indomitable control over my passions, my senses, and my very actions, — the concentration as it were of all the venom, all the rage, all the fury, and all the fire of that stupendous curse which the hell of my feelings had thrown up in their despair! At length, unable to bear up against the torrent of impulses which were overwhelming me, I went and purchased a spade; and when night came, I entered the churchyard of Old St. Pancras, I dug open the crave, I tore up the corpse of the peace-officer’s father, and I mutilated it horribly with the shovel.” “ Eternal God! this is dreadful! ’’ exclaimed Meagles, bounding upon his chair, while his cheeks grew blanched and his lips quivered with indescribable feelings of terror and disgust. “ Ah! I told you that it was necessary to prepare your- self to hear appalling things,’ said Melmoth, with a hollow COnnIClOoKS (S©)