CHAPTER XVII.
AND Lazarus came forth. A faint twitching of the members, a sort of convulsive tremor running from the head to foot, was all the multitude could see, as they pressed forward, a seething mass of tightly packed humanity, to witness this final and gigantic miracle.
In the doorway of the cave stood Lazarus, scarce able to move for the tight swathing of his grave clothes. His hands were tied close to his sides, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Standing there, he looked like some earth-sodden mummy, taken out of a sarcophagus and stood on end, or like a statue hewn in stone. No features, no colouring of life were visible. Immovable he stood and waited, while thousands of hearts seemed almost to cease to beat, checked, as it were, by some magic awe-inspiring wand. There are moments when no cry of ecstasy, no shouts of applause, no clamour of approbation, can express the quiverings of admiration, wrung from a fanatical crowd, like a hushed silence that dares not utter sound. And so it was on this unmatched occasion. A terrible quiet, as if a destroying angel had struck the bystanders dumb, had fallen on all; an awful thrill that seemed to lock together by magnetic force in one great manacle the soul of each onlooker; a terrible faintness as of
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