Page 574 - the-idiot

years ago.
‘She sprang forward and stood still in front of the reptile
as if she had been turned to stone. The beast stopped too,
but its tail and claws still moved about. I believe animals
are incapable of feeling supernatural fright—if I have been
rightly informed,—but at this moment there appeared to
me to be something more than ordinary about Norma’s ter-
ror, as though it must be supernatural; and as though she
felt, just as I did myself, that this reptile was connected with
some mysterious secret, some fatal omen.
‘Norma backed slowly and carefully away from the brute,
which followed her, creeping deliberately after her as though
it intended to make a sudden dart and sting her.
‘In spite of Norma’s terror she looked furious, though she
trembled in all her limbs. At length she slowly bared her
terrible teeth, opened her great red jaws, hesitated—took
courage, and seized the beast in her mouth. It seemed to
try to dart out of her jaws twice, but Norma caught at it and
half swallowed it as it was escaping. The shell cracked in her
teeth; and the tail and legs stuck out of her mouth and shook
about in a horrible manner. Suddenly Norma gave a pite-
ous whine; the reptile had bitten her tongue. She opened her
mouth wide with the pain, and I saw the beast lying across
her tongue, and out of its body, which was almost bitten in
two, came a hideous white-looking substance, oozing out
into Norma’s mouth; it was of the consistency of a crushed
black-beetle. just then I awoke and the prince entered the
room.’
‘Gentlemen!’ said Hippolyte, breaking off here, ‘I have