Hot now, and black as
ink, I proceeded through the town, stopping with perfect system at every
hundredth door: and I laid the faggots of a great burning: and timed
them all for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day.
* * * * *
Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac
malice.
* * * * *
Shall I commit the whole dark fact to paper?--that deep, deep secret of
the human organism?
As I wrought, I waxed wicked as a demon! And with lowered neck, and
forward curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic
play-actors, I went. For here was no harmless burning which I did--but
the crime of arson; and a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and
the rage to burn and raven and riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and
all the mood of Nero, and Nebuchadnezzar: and from my mouth proceeded
all the obscenities of the slum and of the gutter, and I sent up such
hisses and giggles of challenge to Heaven that day as never yet has man
let out.
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