- end_line
- 10792
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10732
- text
- of by tens of thousands of the decent people of the city; syllables
obscene and accursed were shouted forth in tones plainly evincing that
they were the common household breath of their utterers. The
thieves'-quarters, and all the brothels, Lock-and-Sin hospitals for
incurables, and infirmaries and infernoes of hell seemed to have made
one combined sortie, and poured out upon earth through the vile vomitory
of some unmentionable cellar.
Though the hitherto imperfect and casual city experiences of Pierre illy
fitted him entirely to comprehend the specific purport of this terrific
spectacle; still he knew enough by hearsay of the more infamous life of
the town, to imagine from whence, and who, were the objects before him.
But all his consciousness at the time was absorbed by the one horrified
thought of Isabel and Delly, forced to witness a sight hardly endurable
for Pierre himself; or, possibly, sucked into the tumult, and in close
personal contact with its loathsomeness. Rushing into the crowd,
regardless of the random blows and curses he encountered, he wildly
sought for Isabel, and soon descried her struggling from the delirious
reaching arms of a half-clad reeling whiskerando. With an immense blow
of his mailed fist, he sent the wretch humming, and seizing Isabel,
cried out to two officers near, to clear a path for him to the door.
They did so. And in a few minutes the panting Isabel was safe in the
open air. He would have stayed by her, but she conjured him to return
for Delly, exposed to worse insults than herself. An additional posse of
officers now approaching, Pierre committing her to the care of one of
them, and summoning two others to join himself, now re-entered the room.
In another quarter of it, he saw Delly seized on each hand by two
bleared and half-bloody women, who with fiendish grimaces were
ironically twitting her upon her close-necked dress, and had already
stript her handkerchief from her. She uttered a cry of mixed anguish
and joy at the sight of him; and Pierre soon succeeded in returning with
her to Isabel.
During the absence of Pierre in quest of the hack, and while Isabel and
Delly were quietly awaiting his return, the door had suddenly burst
open, and a detachment of the police drove in, and caged, the entire
miscellaneous night-occupants of a notorious stew, which they had
stormed and carried during the height of some outrageous orgie. The
first sight of the interior of the watch-house, and their being so
quickly huddled together within its four blank walls, had suddenly
lashed the mob into frenzy; so that for the time, oblivious of all other
considerations, the entire force of the police was directed to the
quelling of the in-door riot; and consequently, abandoned to their own
protection, Isabel and Delly had been temporarily left to its mercy.
It was no time for Pierre to manifest his indignation at the
officer--even if he could now find him--who had thus falsified his
individual pledge concerning the precious charge committed to him. Nor
was it any time to distress himself about his luggage, still somewhere
within. Quitting all, he thrust the bewildered and half-lifeless girls
into the waiting hack, which, by his orders, drove back in the direction
of the stand, where Pierre had first taken it up.
When the coach had rolled them well away from the tumult, Pierre stopped
it, and said to the man, that he desired to be taken to the nearest
respectable hotel or boarding-house of any kind, that he knew of. The
fellow--maliciously diverted by what had happened thus far--made some
ambiguous and rudely merry rejoinder. But warned by his previous rash
quarrel with the stage-driver, Pierre passed this unnoticed, and in a
controlled, calm, decided manner repeated his directions.
- title
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