wall, where lay the bed, was a Gothic window, pretty large, with low
sill, hung with poppy-figured muslin, and looking directly south, so
that I could recline at ease in the red-velvet easy-chair, and see. It
had evidently been a young lady's room: for on the toilette were
cut-glass bottles, a plait of brown hair, powders, _rouge-aux-levres,_
one little bronze slipper, and knick-knacks, and I loved her and hated
her, though I did not see her anywhere. About half-past eight I sat at
the window to watch, all being arranged and ready at my right hand, the
candles extinguished in the red room: for the theatre was opened, was
opened: and the atmosphere of this earth seemed turned into Hell, and
Hell was in my soul.

* * * * *

Soon after midnight there was a sudden and very visible increase in the
conflagration. On all hands I began to see blazing structures soar, with
grand hurrahs, on high. In fives and tens, in twenties and thirties, all
between me and the remote limit of my vision, they leapt, they lingered
long, they fell. My spirit more and more felt, and danced--deeper
mysteries of sensation, sweeter thrills. I sipped exquisitely, I drew
out enjoyment leisurely. Anon, when some more expansive angel of flame
would arise from the Pit with steady aspiration, and linger with
outspread arms, and burst, I would lift a little from the chair, leaning
forward to clap, as at some famous acting; or I would call to them in
shouts of cheer, giving them the names of Woman. For now I seemed to see
nothing but some bellowing pandemonic universe through crimson glasses,
and the air was wildly hot, and my eye-balls like theirs that walk
staring in the inner midst of burning fiery furnaces, and my skin itched
with a fierce and prickly itch. Anon I touched the chords of the harp to
the air of Wagner's 'Walkueren-ritt.'

Near three in the morning, I reached the climax of my guilty sweets. My
drunken eye-lids closed in a luxury of pleasure, and my lips lay
stretched in a smile that dribbled; a sensation of dear peace, of
almighty power, consoled me: for now the whole area which through
streaming tears I surveyed, mustering its ten thousand thunders, and
brawling beyond the stars the voice of its southward-rushing torment,
billowed to the horizon one grand Atlantic of smokeless and flushing
flame; and in it sported and washed themselves all the fiends of Hell,
with laughter, shouts, wild flights, and holiday