So, after
looking at him a long time, I said to him: 'Well, D. 47, you sleep very
well: and you did well, dying so: I am pleased with you, and to mark my
favour, I decree that you shall neither rot in the common air, nor burn
in the common flames: for by my own hand shall you be distinguished with
burial.' And this wind so possessed me, that I at once went out: with
the crow-bar from the car I broke the window of a near iron-monger's in
Parliament Street, got a spade, and went into Westminster Abbey. I soon
prised up a grave-slab of some famous man in the north transept, and
commenced to shovel: but, I do not know how, by the time I had digged a
foot the whole impulse passed from me: I left off the work, promising to
resume it: but nothing was ever done, for the next day I was at
Woolwich, and busy enough about other matters.
* * * * *
During the next nine days I worked with a fever on me, and a map of
London before me.
There were places in that city!--secrets, vastnesses, horrors! In the
wine-vaults at London Docks was a vat which must certainly have
contained between twenty and thirty thousand gallons: and with dancing
heart I laid a train there; the tobacco-warehouse must have covered
eighty acres: and there I laid a fuse.
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