the clothes of the low spring-bed upon which to throw my frame in the morning hours.  Opposite the wall, where lay the bed, was a Gothic window, pretty large, with low sill, hung with poppy-figured muslin, and looking directly south, so that I could recline at ease in the red-velvet easy-chair, and see.  It had evidently been a young lady’s room:  for on the toilette were cut-glass bottles, a plait of brown hair, powders, rouge-aux-levres, one little bronze slipper, and knick-knacks, and I loved her and hated her, though I did not see her anywhere.  About half-past eight I sat at the window to watch, all being arranged and ready at my right hand, the candles extinguished in the red room:  for the theatre was opened, was opened:  and the atmosphere of this earth seemed turned into Hell, and Hell was in my soul.

* * * * *

Soon after midnight there was a sudden and very visible increase in the conflagration.  On all hands I began to see blazing structures soar, with grand hurrahs, on high.  In fives and tens, in twenties and thirties, all between me and the remote limit of my vision, they leapt, they lingered long, they fell.  My spirit more and more felt, and danced—­deeper mysteries of sensation, sweeter thrills.  I sipped exquisitely, I drew out enjoyment leisurely.  Anon, when some more expansive angel of flame would arise from the Pit with steady aspiration, and linger with outspread arms, and burst, I would lift a little from the chair, leaning forward to clap, as at some famous acting; or I would call to them in shouts of cheer, giving them the names of Woman.  For now I seemed to see nothing but some bellowing pandemonic universe through crimson glasses, and the air was wildly hot, and my eye-balls like theirs that walk staring in the inner midst of burning fiery furnaces, and my skin itched with a fierce and prickly itch.  Anon I touched the chords of the harp to the air of Wagner’s ‘Walkueren-ritt.’

Near three in the morning, I reached the climax of my guilty sweets.  My drunken eye-lids closed in a luxury of pleasure, and my lips lay stretched in a smile that dribbled; a sensation of dear peace, of almighty power, consoled me:  for now the whole area which through streaming tears I surveyed, mustering its ten thousand thunders, and brawling beyond the stars the voice of its southward-rushing torment, billowed to the horizon one grand Atlantic of smokeless and flushing flame; and in it sported and washed themselves all the fiends of Hell, with laughter, shouts, wild flights, and holiday; and I—­first of my race—­had flashed a signal to the nearer planets....

* * * * *

* * * * *

Those words:  ‘signal to the nearer planets’ I wrote nearly fourteen months ago, some days after the destruction of London, I being then on board the old Boreal, making for the coast of France:  for the night was dark, though calm, and I was afraid of running into some ship, yet not sleepy, so I wrote to occupy my fingers, the ship lying still.  The book in which I wrote has been near me:  but no impulse to write anything has visited me, till now I continue; not, however, that I have very much to put down.