To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do not know:  I will watch, and see.  It is written:  ’It is not good for man to be alone!’ But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but the only natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and faddists.  That the whole world should have been made for me alone—­that London should have been built only in order that I might enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning—­that all history, and all civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for my pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and wine, of spices and gold—­no more extraordinary does it all seem to me than to some little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the possessing of lands which his remote forefathers seized, and slew the occupiers:  nor, in reality, is it even so extraordinary, I being alone.  But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem so common-place and natural—­in nine months.  The mind of Adam Jeffson is adaptable.

* * * * *

I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till finally I was disposed to sleep there.  But I had no considerable number of candle-sticks, nor was even sure of candles.  I remembered, however, that Peter Peters, three doors away on the other side of the street, had had four handsome silver candelabra in his drawing-room, each containing six stems; and I said to myself:  ’I will search for candles in the kitchen, and if I find any, I will go and get Peter Peters’ candelabra, and sleep here.’

I took then the two lights which I had, my good God; went down to the passage; then down to the basement; and there had no difficulty in finding three packets of large candles, the fact being, I suppose, that the cessation of gas-lighting had compelled everyone to provide themselves in this way, for there were a great many wherever I looked.  With these I re-ascended, went into a little alcove on the second-floor where I had kept some drugs, got a bottle of carbolic oil, and for ten minutes went dashing all the corpses in the house.  I then left the two lighted bits of candle on the waiting-room table, and, with the car-lamp, passed along the passage to the front-door, which was very violently banging.  I stepped out to find that the storm had increased to a mighty turbulence (though it was dry), which at once caught my clothes, and whirled them into a flapping cloud about and above me; also, I had not crossed the street when my lamp was out.  I persisted, however, half blinded,