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feast that follows the sacrifice and productive of that “horrible mixture of sensuality and cruelty” which is the “real ‘witches’ brew.’”
    But the euphoria is temporary, and ultimately the “re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live,” De Quincey says, makes the evil-doers more “profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.” Macbeth, after killing Duncan, discovers that life has lost its savor; Thurtell, after killing Weare, is rapidly overtaken by despair. Macbeth no longer relishes an existence that has “fallen into the sere”—its autumnal decay; and Thurtell and his mates discover, after the first narcosis of pleasure has worn off, that grog has ceased to cheer and song to make merry. They, too, “have supp’d full with horrors,” and, like Macbeth, are
    cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in
    To saucy doubts and fears. . . .

    * Thurtell said that he had once been “upon terms of intimacy with a Quaker’s family at Norwich,” and had privately paid his addresses to the daughter. The Quaker, however, was informed that his daughter’s suitor “was a profligate bad character” and forbade him the house.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    A Devil’s Grammar of Debauchery
    the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling
    â€” Milton
    A t midnight, Mrs. Probert rose from the table; her husband, however, called for another bottle of rum.
    â€œI suppose you will make a drunken bout of it,” she said to him. “I shan’t disturb you.”
    â€œYes,” Thurtell said, “you may expect to see your Billy come up to bed drunk enough.”
    Mrs. Probert went upstairs.
    â€œWe may as well look and see if there is any chaunt [marking] about the money,” Thurtell said. They examined Weare’s five-pound notes and found no marks. Thurtell then took out Weare’s note-case. It contained a shooting license and a few loose memoranda, but no money. Thurtell next produced Weare’s silk purse.In it were three sovereigns and some silver. They burned the purse upon the hearth together with the papers, and Thurtell divided the money.
    â€œThat’s your share of the blunt,” he said as he gave his mates six pounds apiece. He kept eleven pounds for himself, justifying the larger sum as compensation for the expense to which he had gone in renting the gig and purchasing the pistols.
    â€œThis is a bad look out,” Probert said as he took his share. “This is hardly worth coming down for, Jack.”
    â€œIt cannot be helped,” Thurtell said. “I thought, Bill, we should have had a hundred or two at the least, but we must now make the best of it we can. This watch you must recollect, Bill, will fetch twenty or thirty pounds.”
    â€œVery true,” Probert said, “and the gun, if it is good for any thing, will fetch ten pounds. Go, Hunt, and fetch the gun, and all the other things, and let’s see what they are worth.”
    Hunt went to the stable and brought back the gun, a small box, and a carpetbag.
    Probert took up the gun. “This is one of Manton’s make,” he said. “It will bring at least ten pounds.” He then laid hold of the box. “This is the backgammon board you were speaking of, Jack.”
    â€œYes,” Thurtell said. “That is the board to pick up a flat with.”
    â€œCome, Jack, let’s open the bag, there may be some money in that.”
    Thurtell took a knife and cut open the bag. In it were the clothes and traveling things Weare had brought down with him, together with his shooting gear, his loaded dice, and his false cards. *

    Perhaps no writer of his generation was more sensitive of the hellish breaches in existence than De Quincey, or more skilled in making their horror palpable to the reader. His account of his separation from the waif Ann, lost in the “mighty labyrinths of