and whatever I could find, for filling the interspaces between the platform cross-walls; and of the espagnolette bolts, how a number of them mysteriously disappeared, as if snatched to Hell by harpies, and I had to make them; and how the crane-chain would not reach two of the silver-panel castings when they were finished, and they were too heavy for me to lift, and the wringing of the hands of my despair, and my biting of the earth, and the transport of my fury; and how, for a whole wild week, I searched in vain for the text-book which describes the ambering process; and how, when all was nearly over, in the blasting away of the forge and crane with dynamite, a long crack appeared down the gold of the east platform-steps, and how I would not be consoled, but mourned and mourned; and how, in spite of all my tribulations, it was sweetly interesting to watch my power slowly grow from the first feeble beginnings of the landing of materials and unloading them from the motor, a hundred-weight at a time, till I could swing four tons—­see the solid metals flow—­enjoy the gliding sounds of the handle, crank-shaft, and system of levers, forcing inwards the mould-end, and the upper and lower plungers, for pressing the material—­build at ease in a travelling-cage—­and watch from my hut-door through sleepless hours, under the electric moonlight of this land, the three piles of gold stones, the silver panels, the two-foot squares of jet, and be comforted; and how the putty-wash—­but it is past, it is past:  and not to live over again that vulgar nightmare of means and ends have I taken to this writing again—­but to put down something else, if I dare.

Seventeen years, my good God, of that delusion!  I could write down no sort of explanation for all those groans and griefs, at which a reasoning being would not shriek with laughter.  I should have lived at ease in some palace of the Middle-Orient, and burned my cities:  but no, I must be ’a good man’—­vain thought.  The words of a wild madman, that preaching man in England who prophesied what happened, were with me, where he says:  ‘the defeat of Man is His defeat’; and I said to myself:  ’Well, the last man shall not be quite a fiend, just to spite That Other.’  And I worked and groaned, saying:  ’I will be a good man, and burn nothing, nor utter aught unseemly, nor debauch myself, but choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my throat, and build and build, with moils and groans.’  And it was Vanity:  though I do love the house, too, I love it well, for it is my home on the waste earth.

I had calculated to finish it in twelve years, and I should undoubtedly have finished it in fourteen, instead of in sixteen and seven months, but one day, when the south, north, and east platform-steps were already finished—­it was in the July of the third year, and near sunset—­as I left off work, instead of going to the tent where my dinner lay ready, I walked down to the ship—­most strangely—­in a daft, mechanical sort of way, without saying a word to myself, an evil-meaning smile of malice on my lips; and at midnight I was lying off Mitylene, thirty miles to the south, having bid, as I thought, a last farewell to all those toils.  I was going to burn Athens.