The huge hands pressed suddenly. There was brittle crackling, and a rare
violin became kindling. A sob broke from the prisoner's lips. What
to Karlov was a fiddle to him was a soul. He saw the madman fling the
wreckage to the floor and grind his heels into the fragments. Gregor
shut his eyes, but he could not shut his ears; and he sensed in that
cold, demoniacal fury of the crunching heel the rising of maddened
peoples.