the conflagration, and shortly began to soliloquize, in the
wildest strain, as if Fancy resisted and became riotous, at the moment
when he would have compelled her to ascend that funeral pile. His words
described objects which he appeared to discern in the fire, fed by his
own precious thoughts; perhaps the thousand visions which the writer's
magic had incorporated with these pages became visible to him in the
dissolving heat, brightening forth ere they vanished forever; while the
smoke, the vivid sheets of flame, the ruddy and whitening coals, caught
the aspect of a varied scenery.

"They blaze," said he, "as if I had steeped them in the intensest
spirit of genius. There I see my lovers clasped in each other's arms.
How pure the flame that bursts from their glowing hearts! And yonder
the features of a villain writhing in the fire that shall torment him
to eternity. My holy men, my pious and angelic women, stand like
martyrs amid the flames, their mild eyes lifted heavenward. Ring out
the bells! A city is on fire. See!--destruction roars through my dark
forests, while the lakes boil up in steaming billows, and the mountains
are volcanoes, and the sky kindles with a lurid brightness! All
elements are but one pervading flame! Ha! The fiend!"

I was somewhat startled by this latter exclamation. The tales were
almost consumed, but just then threw forth a broad sheet of fire, which
flickered as with laughter, making the whole room dance in its
brightness, and then roared portentously up the chimney.

"You saw him? You must have seen him!" cried Oberon. "How he glared at
me and laughed, in that last sheet of flame, with just the features
that I imagined for him! Well! The tales are gone."

The papers were indeed reduced to a heap of black cinders, with a
multitude of sparks hurrying confusedly among them, the traces of the
pen being now represented by white lines, and the whole mass fluttering
to and fro in the draughts of air. The destroyer knelt down to look at
them.

"What is more potent than fire!" said he, in his gloomiest tone. "Even
thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escape it. In this
little time, it has annihilated the creations of long nights and days,
which I could no more reproduce, in their first glow and freshness,
than cause ashes and whitened bones to rise up and live. There, too, I
sacrificed the unborn children of my mind. All that I had
accomplished--all that I planned for future year