* * * * *

I have said to myself:  ’I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms.  I will rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus.  I will build me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy before the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and rough frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl.  For there were many men to the eye:  but there was One only, really:  and I was he.  And always I knew it:—­some faintest secret whisper which whispered me:  “You are the Arch-one, the motif of the world, Adam, and the rest of men not much.”  And they are gone—­all! all!—­as no doubt they deserved:  and I, as was meet, remain.  And there are wines, and opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and bivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients.  I will be restless and turbulent in my territories:  and again, I will be languishing and fond.  I will say to my soul:  “Be Full."’

* * * * *

I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in a test-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle.

I am very averse to trouble of any sort, so that the necessity for the simplest manual operations will rouse me to indignation:  but if a thing will contribute largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I will undergo a considerable amount of labour to accomplish it, though without steady effort, being liable to side-winds and whims, and purposeless relaxations.

In the country I became very irritable at the need which confronted me of occasionally cooking some green vegetable—­the only item of food which it was necessary to take some trouble over:  for all meats, and many fish, some quite delicious, I find already prepared in forms which will remain good probably a century after my death, should I ever die.  In Gloucester, however, I found peas, asparagus, olives, and other greens, already prepared to be eaten without base cares:  and these, I now see, exist everywhere in stores so vast comparatively to the needs of a single man, that they may be called infinite.  Everything, in fact, is infinite compared with my needs.  I take my meals, therefore, without more trouble than a man who had to carve his joint, or chicken:  though even that little I sometimes find most irksome.  There remains the detestable degradation of lighting fires for warmth, which I have occasionally to do:  for the fire at the hotel invariably goes out while I sleep.  But that is an inconvenience of this vile northern island only, to which I shall soon bid eternal glad farewells.

During the afternoon of my second day in London, I sought out a strong petrol motor in Holborn, overhauled and oiled it a little, and set off over Blackfriars Bridge, making for Woolwich through that other more putrid London on the south river-side.  One after the other, I connected, as I came upon them, two drays, a cab, and a private carriage, to my motor in line behind, having cut away the withered horses, and using the reins, chain-harness, &c., as impromptu couplings.  And with this novel train, I rumbled eastward.