"Let me alone!" cried Oberon, his eyes flashing fire."I will burn them! Not a scorched syllable shall escape! Would you have me a damned author?--To undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praise, bestowed, for pity's sake, against the giver's conscience! A hissing and a laughing-stock to my own traitorous thoughts! An outlaw from the protection of the grave,--one whose ashes every careless foot might spurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death! Am I to bear all this, when yonder fire will insure me from the whole? No! There go the tales! May my hand wither when it would write another!"The deed was done.He had thrown the manuscripts into the hottest of the fire, which at first seemed to shrink away, but soon curled around them, and made them a part of its own fervent brightness.Oberon stood gazing at the conflagration, and shortly began to soliloquize, in the wildest strain, as if Fancy resisted and became riotous, at the moment when he wouldhave 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 Iplanned for future years--has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The deed has been my fate.And what remains? A weary and aimless life,--a long repentance of this hour,--and at last an obscure grave, where they will bury and forget me!"As the author concluded his dolorous moan, the extinguished embers arose and settled down and arose again, and finally flew up the chimney, like a demon with sable wings.Just as they disappeared, there was a loud and solitary cry in the street below us."Fire!" Fire! Other voices caught up that terrible word, and it speedily became the shout of a multitude.Oberon started to his feet, in fresh excitement.
"A fire on such a night!" cried he."The wind blows a gale, and wherever it whirls the flames, the roofs will flash up like gunpowder.Every pump is frozen up, and boiling water would turn to ice the moment it was flung from the engine.In an hour, this wooden town will be one great bonfire! What a glorious scene for my next--Pshaw!"The street was now all alive with footsteps, and the air full of voices.We heard one engine thundering round a corner, and another rattling from a distance over the pavements.The bells of three steeples clanged out at once, spreading the alarm to many a neighboring town, and expressing hurry, confusion, and terror, so inimitably that I could almost distinguish in their peal the burden of the universal cry,--"Fire! Fire! Fire!""What is so eloquent as their iron tongues!" exclaimed Oberon."My heart leaps and trembles, but not with fear.And that other sound, too, - deep and awful as a mighty organ,--the roar and thunder of the multitude on the pavement below! Come! We are losing time.I will cry out in the loudest of the uproar, and mingle my spirit with the wildest of the confusion, and be a bubble on the top of the ferment!"From the first outcry, my forebodings had warned me of the true object and centre of alarm.There was nothing now but uproar, above, beneath, and around us; footsteps stumbling pell-mell up the public staircase, eager shouts and heavy thumps at the door, the whiz and dash of water from the engines, and the crash of furniture thrown upon the pavement.At once, the truth flashed upon my friend.His frenzy took the hue of joy, and, with a wild gesture of exultation, he leaped almost to the ceiling of the chamber.
"My tales!" cried Oberon."The chimney! The roof! The Fiend has gone forth by night, and startled thousands in fear and wonder from their beds! Here I stand,--a triumphant author! Huzza! Huzza! My brain has set the town on fire! Huzza!"
