As the military retreated, a hundred priests instantly closed
round the unhappy man, and with generous despair exposed themselves to
the fury of the multitude. While the Suprema, hastening to the dreadful
spot, stood in the front of the priests, with the cross uplifted,--his
face was like that of the dead, but his eye had not lost a single flash
of its fire, nor his voice a tone of its pride. It was in vain; the
multitude proceeded calmly, and even respectfully, (when not resisted),
to remove all that obstructed their progress; in doing so, they took
every care of the persons of priests whom they were compelled to remove,
repeatedly asking their pardon for the violence they were guilty of. And
this tranquillity of resolved vengeance was the most direful indication
of its never desisting till its purpose was accomplished. The last ring
was broken--the last resister overcome. Amid yells like those of a
thousand tigers, the victim was seized and dragged forth, grasping in
both hands fragments of the robes of those he had clung to in vain, and
holding them up in the impotence of despair. “The cry was hushed for a moment, as they felt him in their talons, and
gazed on him with thirsty eyes. Then it was renewed, and the work of
blood began. They dashed him to the earth--tore him up again--flung him
into the air--tossed him from hand to hand, as a bull gores the howling
mastiff with horns right and left. Bloody, defaced, blackened with
earth, and battered with stones, he struggled and roared among them,
till a loud cry announced the hope of a termination to a scene alike
horrible to humanity, and disgraceful to civilization. The military,
strongly reinforced, came galloping on, and all the ecclesiastics, with
torn habits, and broken crucifixes, following fast in the rear,--all
eager in the cause of human nature--all on fire to prevent this base and
barbarous disgrace to the name of Christianity and of human nature. “Alas! this interference only hastened the horrible catastrophe. There
was but a shorter space for the multitude to work their furious will. I
saw, I felt, but I cannot describe, the last moments of this horrible
scene. Dragged from the mud and stones, they dashed a mangled lump of
flesh right against the door of the house where I was. With his tongue
hanging from his lacerated mouth, like that of a baited bull; with one
eye torn from the socket, and dangling on his bloody cheek; with a
fracture in every limb, and a wound for every pore, he still howled for
“life--life--life--mercy!” till a stone, aimed by some pitying hand,
struck him down. He fell, trodden in one moment into sanguine and
discoloured mud by a thousand feet. The cavalry came on, charging with
fury. The crowd, saturated with cruelty and blood, gave way in grim
silence. But they had not left a joint of his little finger--a hair of
his head--a slip of his skin. Had Spain mortgaged all her reliques from
Madrid to Monserrat, from the Pyrennees to Gibraltar, she could not have
recovered the paring of a nail to canonize. The officer who headed the
troop dashed his horse’s hoofs into a bloody formless mass, and
demanded, “Where was the victim?” He was answered, “Beneath your horse’s
feet(4);” and they departed. * * * * * * * * *

  (4) This circumstance occurred in Ireland 1797, after the murder of
  the unfortunate Dr Hamilton. The officer was answered, on inquiring
  what was that heap of mud at his horse’s feet,--“The man you came
  for.”

“It is a fact, Sir, that while witnessing this horrible execution, I
felt all the effects vulgarly ascribed to fascination. I shuddered at
the first movement--the dull and deep whisper among the crowd. I
shrieked involuntarily when the first decisive movements began among
them; but when at last the human shapeless carrion was dashed against
the door, I echoed the wild shouts of the multitude with a kind of
savage instinct. I bounded--I clasped my hands for a moment--then I
echoed the screams of the thing that seemed no longer to live, but still
could scream; and I screamed aloud and wildly for life--life--and mercy! One face was turned towards me as I shrieked in unconscious tones. The
glance, fixed on me for a moment, was in a moment withdrawn. The flash
of the well-known eyes made no impression on me then. My existence was
so purely mechanical, that, without the least consciousness of my own
danger, (scarce less than that of the victim, had I been detected), I
remained uttering shout for shout, and scream for scream--offering
worlds in imagination to be able to remove from the window, yet feeling
as if every shriek I uttered was as a nail that fastened me to
it--dropping my eye-lids, and feeling as if a hand held them open, or
cut them away--forcing me to gaze on all that passed below, like
Regulus, with his lids cut off, compelled to gaze on the sun that
withered up his eye-balls--till sense, and sight, and soul, failed me,
and I fell grasping by the bars of the window, and mimicking, in my
horrid trance, the shouts of the multitude, and the yell of the
devoted(5). I actually for a moment believed myself the object of their
cruelty. The drama of terror has the irresistible power of converting
its audience into its victims. (5) In the year 1803, when Emmett’s insurrection broke out in
  Dublin--(_the fact_ from which this account is drawn was related to me
  by an eye-witness)--Lord Kilwarden, in passing through Thomas Street,
  was dragged from his carriage, and murdered in the most horrid manner. Pike after pike was thrust through his body, till at last he was
  _nailed to a door_, and called out to his murderers to “put him out of
  his pain.” At this moment, a shoemaker, who lodged in the garret of an
  opposite house, was drawn to the window by the horrible cries he
  heard. He stood at the window, gasping with horror, his wife
  attempting vainly to drag him away. He saw the last blow struck--he
  heard the last groan uttered, as the sufferer cried, “put me out of
  pain,” while sixty pikes were thrusting at him. The man stood at his
  window as if nailed to it; and when dragged from it, became--an _idiot
  for life_. “The Jew had kept apart from the tumult of the night. He had, I suppose,
been saying within himself, in the language of your admirable poet,

    “Oh, Father Abraham, what these Christians are!”

But when he returned at a late hour, he was struck with horror at the
state in which he found me. I was delirious,--raving, and all he could
say or do to soothe me, was in vain. My imagination had been fearfully
impressed, and the consternation of the poor Jew was, I have been told,
equally ludicrous and dismal. In his terror, he forgot all the technical
formality of the Christian names by which he had uniformly signalized
his household, since his residence in Madrid at least. He called aloud
on Manasseh-ben-Solomon his son, and Rebekah his maid, to assist in
holding me.