ful sleep with the brow of a corpse, wet
with sweat....

* * * * *

I returned to London on the 29th of March, arriving within a hundred
yards of the Northern Station one windy dark evening about eight, where
I alighted, and walked to Euston Road, then eastward along it, till I
came to a shop which I knew to be a jeweller's, though it was too dark
to see any painted words. The door, to my annoyance, was locked, like
nearly all the shop-doors in London: I therefore went looking near the
ground, and into a cart, for something heavy, very soon saw a labourer's
ponderous boots, cut one from the shrivelled foot, and set to beat at
the glass till it came raining; then knocked away the bottom splinters,
and entered.

No horrors now at that clatter of broken glass; no sick qualms; my
pulse steady; my head high; my step royal; my eye cold and calm.

* * * * *

Eight months previously, I had left London a poor burdened, cowering
wight. I could scream with laughter now at that folly! But it did not
last long. I returned to it--the Sultan.

* * * * *

No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel in
Bloomsbury: but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would be
there, I was not sure that I should find sufficient: for I had acquired
the habit within the past few months of sleeping with at least sixty
lighted about me, and their form, pattern, style, age, and material was
of no small importance I selected ten from the broken shop, eight gold
and silver, and two of old ecclesiastical brass, and having made a
bundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan Station, pumped
it, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding. But since I
was too lazy to walk, I should certainly have procured some other means
of travelling, for I had not gone ten jolted and creaking yards, when
something went snap--it was a front fork--and I found myself half on
the ground, and half across the bare knees of a Highland soldier. I flew
with a shower of kicks upon the foolish thing: but that booted nothing;
and this was my last attempt in that way in London, the streets being in
an unsuitable condition.

All that dismal night it blew great guns: and during nearly three weeks,
till London was no more, there was a storm, with hardly a lull, that
seemed to behowl her destruction.

* * * * *

I