een 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, to Peters door. It was locked: but immediately
near the pavement was a window, the lower sa