Dickensblog

Here's part 1, by Nina. If you want to write part 2, don't forget to post your request in the comments section!

***

Everybody said that Mr. Dickens could bring his characters to life.
You could ask anyone you knew. If you asked the rich lady seated primly
in the front row, face immoveable, she might fan herself with a green
screen and answer demurely that she thought he did, perhaps; if you
asked the schoolboy, he might chuckle his “I suppose so” to appear
manly among his fellows, but everyone agreed; when Charles Dickens read
his books aloud, it was as if his characters existed in the room and
could listen, too.

And what did Mr. Dickens think, himself? Surely, it is
impossible to say – for who can plumb the depth of such a genius’ mind?
– but in his crisp blue coat with brass buttons, his very hair swept
carelessly back in the fervor of his performance, the sparkling eye and
confident voice, which shifted effortlessly form the lofty speech of
good English bureaucrats to the tiny squeak of the most wretched orphan
who ever trod the streets of London – observe all this, the very
picture of vitality and confidence, and you may derive a picture of the
author’s opinion of himself. And yet, despite his vivacity, despite the
fact that thousands loved him, and that he, more or less, loved
himself, there was also a conceit, a – dare we say, a very arrogance,
that pervaded his character? And that – we are only suggesting, of
course – he sometimes cared less for others, and more for himself, than
was quite required or attractive in a man of his position? Whether
these flaws are founded (and recall, we only speculate), we shall see
presently – for if ever they were to be magnified or changed, the
following adventure would hasten such alteration.

Our story begins on a Saturday morning in London, near the end of
the Inimitable's inimitable career, and at the end of one of his
majestic, exhilarating public readings. The passage was from his eighth
novel, and in his pride and admiration of his most beloved work, his
own emotion added an extra thrill to the masterful words. “ – I’ll
break your head you…HEEP of infamy!” The words slid out, tumbling over
each other as though they were graceful acrobats sent to entertain the
audience, which stared, in rapt attention, at the author as he reached
the end of the passage, as good triumphed (properly) and as evil shrank
into its black depths (appropriately). The audience of this reading
sighed, unanimously, it seemed, as Mr. Dickens shut the final book, the
last of several from which he had read that evening, with a resounding
boom. “I daresay,” he remarked, in his own jovial voice, to his
audience, “that my ‘favourite child’ feels he has just received a
beating.” Everyone laughed because Mr. Dickens laughed, and possibly
because they thought it was funny, though that is rather doubtful, as
he was, after all, a very important figure.

An attendant was present to help our author, an ugly youth with
sandy hair and an overall greasy, shabby appearance; and this worthy
now began to pack Mr. Dickens’ valise with the various novels. Though
Mr. Dickens felt it incumbent upon him to correct the stacking every
four seconds, and to interpose that “David Copperfield must come after
Bleak House as I will need it first tomorrow”, his lessened duties
allowed him to survey the crowd, which he often did for possible
inspiration.

What a hodge-podge crowd it was! Mr. Dickens noticed that,
immediately, and attempted to pick out the strangest and most
fascinating of this crowd. But in the midst of this jumble, one figure
stood out so starkly that Mr. Dickens started, and stared. It was a
very strange, almost ethereal figure; the sight of her made every nerve
in his body jump, made his heart beat fast, and he could not avert his
gaze. No one else seemed to have the same reaction – in fact, very few
of them even noticed her. It was not because she was dressed in a most
peculiar way, for her dress reminded him of the fashion of his youth,
now over 30 years past; it was not her beauty which impressed him for,
on the contrary, her face was obscured by a thick veil, which stirred
slightly with her movements and the softly moving air; it was not even
the way she had of standing nobly, yet modestly, and imprinting such a
figure that all the crowd seemed to disappear around her. It was,
indeed, all this, but not just this. What was so strange, and provoked
such a violent reaction in the author’s breast, was the
incomprehensible feeling that, though he’d never seen her before in his
life, he KNEW her vividly!

Mr. Dickens, it must be admitted, stood there like a simpleton
and, frankly, gaped. He gasped as she made a move toward him; he heard
a dull voice behind him, but it was as though he was moving in a thick,
impenatrable fog. Then something odd happened which stopped all this.
The crowd screamed! He wondered, at first, if some sort of miracle or
something had happened as the world had seemed to spin around him –
that would explain the peculiar incident. But upon observing the
intricate metal tiles above him, which he knew comprised the ceiling of
that building, and upon having half-a-score of faces shoved into his
from above, he rightly deduced that he had in reality misstepped and
fallen off the platform.

As a result of this incidence, there were rumors that Charles
Dickens had died in the newspapers for the next three weeks, but of
course we know he did not, else there would be no story! With the help
of some by-standers he picked himself up and dusted himself off, and
immediately searched the crowd for the girl in the sky-blue dress who
had made that singular impression upon him, and stirred such strange
emotions in his heart. But she had gone; she had vanished like a
spectre.

Mr. Dickens almost wondered if she was one.

*****

This was a singular occurrence, certainly; but we must
remember that the Inimitable often had strange encounters, and was so
often busy that extraneous oddities were dismissed, remembered only for
magnified inclusion in his fictions. So though this encounter greatly
disturbed Mr. Dickens, by that evening he had resolved to put it quite
out of his mind, as a thing of little importance. As we shall see, this
proved to be a futile resolution.

“She was likely a madwoman, and my better nature was
subconsciously stirred by her pathetic figure,” he reasoned to himself,
as he battled a stubborn violet necktie in front of the mirror in is
London chambers, an endeavour made more difficult by the uncontrollable
nervous trembling of his fingers. “Lord knows, I have become, against
my will, involved with many such unfortunate creatures.” Surely, this
was good reasoning. To enforce this good reasoning (not, of course, to
calm his nerves – for what needed calming?) he drank back a vial of
wine. This seemed to improve his reasoning, and so he drank a few more,
always a good idea.

Yet the darkened atmosphere of his room; the dull lights flickering
upon the wall, illuminating the bleary black streaks of soot that
climbed the wallpaper like shadows; the full moon, so peaceful yet so
frightening as she threw long and hoary rays of light across his floor;
and the admittedly very dramatic nature of the author himself as he
evaluated all this, worked very much to his mischief.

“I am quite a fine specimen,” he chid himself with grand
derision. “I’ve become a very Scrooge, myself! Well, Scrooge only
encountered ghosts because I willed it. I shan’t encounter ghosts
tonight. Unless some other author wills it…stuff and nonsense! I grow
very absurd in my old age.”

By now, barefoot and in only his shirt and cap, Mr. Dickens
proceeded to the antechamber; yet some feeling he had caused him to
look around and examine his room. For what, exactly, he wasn’t sure –
after all, it was merely your commonplace apartment in a fine London
hotel, reserved for such people as himself – but he examined it
thoroughly, moving about slowly, as the players in a pantomime do. He
even thrust his head out that third-story window and looked around by
the light of a choking candle, but saw nothing but some pigeons that
looked at him curiously as if – heaven forbid – they didn’t know he was
Charles Dickens. “I see nothing because there is nothing to see,” he
remarked, and having infinite confidence in all he said or did he
retired to his bed chamber, which was shut off from his study by a
door, and which he bolted, as was his usual custom. He drew the heavy
brocade curtains thickly around his bed, snuffed the candle’s last
smoky breath, and at last fell into a fitful doze.

And he was awakened. What noised had jarred him from his
dreamless sleep? How long had he slept? He could not tell – ah! The
clock. Mr. Dickens craned his head to listen. “One, two, three, four…”
he counted. His voice sounded hoarse and strange in the silence. “…Ten,
eleven, twelve chimes.”

He had turned to sleep again; his eyes had slowly dropped,
obliterating all the outside world and about to shut him into the land
of dreaming – when suddenly, a light came on in the outer study. Mr.
Dickens sat bold upright, but before throwing himself out into the dark
room as he would fain do, he paused judiciously. It was a dull light
that crept in beneath the old door, a light that, like liquid, began to
drain into Mr. Dickens’ antechamber – someone had lit a candle, it
appeared; and Mr. Dickens could hear, accompanying this light, a
shuffling sound. Someone was in the study, and probing around by the
light of that one weak candle.

Unable to talk, scarcely able to move, and thoroughly bewildered, Mr.
Dickens stared at the light seeping in through the cracks in the door’s
aperture, as though in a dream. He swallowed and tried to gather his
senses; and heard what he thought to be a brass candlestick clang to
the floor, which provoked a rapid utterance from the intruder, who,
after pausing for a moment, sounded to continue his thievery again.
What a freakish position to be in! Mr. Dickens cursed his compulsive
barring of the door. In seconds, he tried to plan what he might do;
locked in the bedchamber, he was safe, but trapped, with no bell to
ring for help.

“Perhaps I could step out, to approach this intruder, then
ring,” the author considered. From outside, he could hear the intruder
– a man – say, “This will do – “ and Mr. Dickens wondered what the
thief had stolen.

So, steeled by such impertinence, Mr. Dickens unbarred the door
and boldly presented himself, albeit cutting rather a foolish figure in
his nightcap and shirt.

The gentleman actually did not notice him at first, which was
not exactly climactic; he had his back turned to the author, rifling
through the bureau drawers with amazing quickness, as though he were
searching for something. He overturned drawers and their entire
contents on the floor in his haste. Mr. Dickens was astonished to find
that the stranger was quite young – certainly no more than
five-and-twenty, at most, and clean cut as well – he was no vagrant or
vagabond, as Mr. Dickens had first thought; what was more, he was
evidently in a state of serious agitation, for his clothes were
disheveled and disordered, and his countenance flushed from distress.
As Mr. Dickens gazed upon him in this brief moment, the same eerie
feeling – the strange recognition that he had felt that morning, at the
reading – consumed him. It only made him chafe the more, and though he
looked ridiculous (for even great men look ridiculous in a night cap),
he demanded, “What do you want here? Speak! Speak now or you shall meet
with violence, you criminal!” He had his hand on the bell and would
have sent it clanging through the silent house, but the gentleman,
whirling round with a frightful glance, quickly interposed, “Why, you
are here!! Oh! Hush, if you value your life!” In his hurry, the strange
gentleman had caught hold of Mr. Dickens’ arm, but this was a bad
decision, for in the space of ten seconds the young gentleman was
sprawled out on the floor with Mr. Dickens towering over him.

“I mean no harm!” the young gentleman pleaded from his spot of
disadvantage, pressing his hand to his face, where Mr. Dickens had left
a purple mark of introduction. “Please, sir, pray don’t be foolish! I
did not know you were here, else I should have approached you
immediately. For it is you I wished, very much, to see.”

“What do you want from me? Money? You shall not have it,” Mr. Dickens informed him, grandly.

“I don’t WANT money, sir, far from it. I want to help – to save you!”

Mr. Dickens stared at him in incredulity and suspicion, but the
strange feeling in his breast caused him to yield, and retreat, slowly.
The young gentleman clambered to his feet, made some quick attempts to
calm himself and improve his appearance, and pursued, “I see you do not
understand what I mean.” He ran his hand through his rich brown hair
and paced the room in the few moments of peace provided by Mr. Dickens’
distraction. “How can I make you comprehend what has happened this day,
what grave danger may await you?” Suddenly, the strange gentleman
wheeled on the author.

“Why, you still don’t know me, do you?!”

“Why should you suppose so?” Mr. Dickens challenged, with his arms
folded across his chest, “I, who have never seen you in my life?”

“Yes, never seen me; that is true indeed,” the young man nodded, considering, “but does that mean you do not know me?”

“This is madness,” Dickens exclaimed, but was instantly stayed by the words, delivered in a strange and calm voice;

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether
that station shall be held by anyone else, these pages must show.

“You admire my works? You have read my book?” Mr. Dickens asked,
anxiously. His face was deadly white, paler than the faded linen of his
night dress, and that strange indescribable feeling threatened to choke
the very life from him.

“You know better than that,” the gentleman replied, with a mixture of
compassion and clear impatience, “for it was you who made me, who built
my very existence. I know that you understand that I am David
Copperfield, and you know that I am no madman, for you are no madman.
Or at least, I hope not – that would reflect very badly on my own
character.”

Mr. Dickens stared at him for what seemed to be a very long time. “You
could, perhaps, be a – a blot of mustard?” Mr. Dickens ventured,
hopefully.

“Did you have mustard today?” David Copperfield asked.

“I never have mustard,” the author admitted, sadly.

“Neither do I. I suppose that is in consequence of my being, as I have heard, modelled after you.”

Mr. Dickens pulled at his beard. “This is incredulous,” he uttered,
entirely at a loss. “You seek to make a fool of me, I think; for this
is beyond all I can believe.”

“Aye, it is. All we can figure is that – “

“We?” Mr. Dickens had sunk onto a meek three-legged stool, but now sprang up to his full height again.

“Yes, ‘we’. I suppose I should begin at the beginning – “

“I would expect nothing else,” Mr. Dickens retorted, sullenly.

“ – Begin at the beginning,” Copperfield continued, steadily. “You
conducted a public reading this morning, sampling passages from nearly
all your books, did you not, sir?”

“I did.” Mr. Dickens, slumping, observed David Copperfield take a pen
and a slip of paper from the study desk, and store it away in a
carpetbag he had with him as he spoke.

“Yes, I thought so. You are known for bringing your characters to life,
and perhaps the weather was very conducive today, or something – at any
rate, you did something you’ve never done before, and read us – by
“us”, I mean some of your characters – out of the books.”

Mr. Dickens held his hands clasped tightly together, and choked out the
words, “Continue, please, for I shall not evaluate my sanity until you
conclude.”

“I wish you would not be so doubtful, sir! Stranger things have
happened in your books, you know! Don’t you recall the passing of poor
Krook? But to continue. You read me out into the middle of a London
street, sir, where I was nearly trampled, for traffic has increased
very much in the forty years since I existed. Being an author, I
supposed, allowed me to know what happened right away, but I thought
perhaps only I had had the experience. However,” here he turned about
sharply, with a livid look on his handsome face, “you had evidently
been reading a passage with Uriah Heep in it, for I hear he got out,
too.”

“I – I did read a passage with Heep in it,” Dickens said, rather
guiltily, but also rather defiantly, “but your aunt, Dick, and Micawber
were there, also. But how did you know Heep got out? You saw him, I
suppose?”

“No – I’m glad of it! After rambling about the city for several hours,
not knowing what to do and in a state of utmost distraction, I
fortunately encountered a lovely lady in a sky-blue dress, and veil.
What attracted me to her was her clear discomfort – I knew, by her
costume and demeanor that she was as out of place as I – so I summoned
my courage to talk to her – get dressed in street clothes,” he suddenly
interjected, “for we will be going out. Wear this blue coat, perhaps,”
and he handed it to the bewildered author of his being. “I spoke to the
lady, who told me that her name was Esther Summerson, and that she came
from Bleak House, and had been read into your audience (by Bleak House,
I don’t know whether she was referring to the work or the residence,
though I suppose it matters little now). She told me that, when she had
recovered her good senses, she saw a suspicious red-haired person,
talking quite fiercely about you with a fat but modest person, whose
hair stuck up straight on his head.”

“That is certainly Uriah Heep…and perhaps Pecknsiff, also,” Mr. Dickens
noted, helpfully. He was actually quite engrossed with the story. He
would have enjoyed it very much if it weren’t happening to him.

“Miss Summerson tried to alert you, but you – suffered a fall – and
she could not see you in the crush. You disappeared before she could
tell you. She was quite in earnest (I was very sorry for her when I
saw, as she lifted her veil, she had been horribly disfigured, by your
hand), and she truly believes those two, at least, wish to do you
serious ill.”

“But why would they wish to do ME harm?” Mr. Dickens pleaded (rather
pettishly, if we must be entirely honest). Part of David’s comment also
struck him heavily, but he tried to put it out of his mind. Had you
disfigured a good young woman, wouldn’t you feel the same shame?

“I suppose,” David said, thoughtfully, “because you consigned them to a
doomed fate – they could be nothing but evil, could reap no rewards but
imprisonment and hatred, and there was nothing they could do to change
it, for you willed it so.”

“But they would not even exist, if I had not made them,” Mr. Dickens protested. “They should be thankful to me!”

“Perhaps; but regardless, they are not. I am glad to find you “all in
one piece”. You and I know that Uriah – and likely this Pecksniff,
though I admit I don’t know him – are quite powerful on their own, yet
you made quite a number of cads, so they could be aided by ever so many
more villains. I, however, and Miss Summerson, and hopefully some
others, want to help you, and preserve you, as not only our author
(for, we would not exist without you), but as a fellow human being. In
as much as we are human beings,” he added, with a kind of regret. But
he soon regained his composure. “You and I must escape this place
before Uriah and company find you, because if they do – it will not go
well with you.” With this conclusion, Mr. Copperfield buckled the
sagging carpetbag up, and slipped something hard into his coat pocket.
Mr. Dickens watched, with an anxious fascination peculiar to him, as he
struggled into his heavy woolen greatcoat. “What have you there, in
that bag?”

“A number of things I feel might aid us. A map of the city, money,
clothing, pen and ink and papers (as a fellow author, you know the
necessity of this), several of your own books for helpful clues. And
also…protection.”

“Do you refer,” Mr. Dickens gulped, “to the revolver in your coat pocket?”

“I do.”

“But to kill a fictional character – “

“Sends them to either the heaven or hell you wrote for them, and keeps
you out of the place written for you, by your author, back before time
existed.” Mr. Copperfield closed his eyes, and took a breath, as if to
calm himself. “Yet if you follow my instructions, we shall not have to
meet with any of this. Miss Summerson believes, from what she deduced
by your reading, that Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Sam Weller might have been
read into a downtown London club, just as I was read into a street
because of the passage you quoted, and as she was read into the old law
building in which your show was held. We are to go there now to ask for
aid. They know their way about London even better than I do, and can,
perhaps, help you to find Sydney Carton.” All the while he had been
speaking, David Copperfield had been snuffing candles, closing
curtains, and locking doors, and before our author realized it, his
character was ushering Mr. Dickens out of the house. Signaling quiet,
he conducted Mr. Dickens down the back stairs, out at the servant’s
door, and into the street. Mr. Dickens realized this was how David had
entered the house. A burst of cold air told them they had entered the
open street. David Copperfield hailed a passing cab, and the pair
climbed inside.

Once the carriage had started away from the house, which grew invisible
by the distance, Mr. Dickens asked his companion in a subdued tone,
“Why do we look for Sydney Carton?”

David Copperfield, for the first time that evening, looked rather
unsure of himself. “I admit…it is perhaps a worthless fancy of mine; I
know nothing for sure – but I feel that, if we were to find Sydney
Carton, he would know what to do.”

“Why do you think that?” Dickens asked, stoutly. “Why not Micawber, or Scrooge, or – “

“Perhaps it is because I am an author,” Mr. Copperfield replied, “and I
feel it would be a kind of poetic justice for him to know the solution.
Surely, you cannot argue with that.”

Mr. Dickens agreed – he could not. And what right had he to argue? This was beyond his realm of reason.

From their position in the city, it would take hours to reach the
famous site of the Pickwick Club. So Mr. Dickens, being about 50 years
old and unable to combat the forces of fatigue, fell back into the same
fitful doze he had had in his chambers back home. Every half-hour or
so, he would awake with the start old men have (though, were you to ask
him, he would reply that he is strictly middle aged), and open his eyes
to find David Copperfield still at his side, still sitting upright,
looking fastidiously out of window or carefully consulting his map and
the copy of Pickwick he had brought along. At these times, our author,
we must admit, felt a sort of sinking. He had written David to be a
copy of himself, and yet he knew that was not so. David was much
kinder, more sensitive, more steadfast. “And I never have been.” And he
would, disconsolately, shut his eyes and drop into sleep again.

Though it seemed like the space of a few minutes, after five hours dawn
began to force her rosy hue through London’s brown sky, and it was this
light, and the stoppage of the coach, that made Mr. Dickens sit up
straight and search in the dimness for Mr. Copperfield.

“Do not worry,” his companion whispered, “the driver thinks we are lost.”

“I believe we are actually quite close,” Mr. Dickens replied, looking
about at the buildings with bleary eyes. “Yes, I remember this all
clearly.”

“At any rate, I shall get out to talk to him, because he won’t budge, I’m afraid.”

The carriage jolted as David Copperfield stepped out, and the carpetbag
had tumbled into the floorboard and sent its contents flapping about in
the hay. Mr. Dickens had stooped to gather together the papery harvest,
had buckled the bag fast, and after fumbling about a bit at the lock of
the door, had it open and was about to step out, when he suddenly heard
a noise that made his heart, quite literally, stop. It was a shot,
fired from a gun – a terrible groan – and a hollow thud upon the
pavement. The horses of the carriage immediately shied at the blast and
the conveyance went rocketing down the street, carrying a screaming
coachman and pitching Mr. Dickens out the open door and headfirst into
the street. He stumbled to his knees and searched about in the dim and
feeble light, until his glance fell upon the prostrate figure of Mr.
Copperfield, lying very still, and very near his end, on the cold
stones.

Mr. Dickens could hardly breathe. He crawled over to the figure and
lifted the head up. What was this fluid that seeped onto his hands and
ran onto the pavement? Oh, horrible blood! But it was not blood; it was
too dark; in his distorted mind, Mr. Dickens raised his dripping hand
to his face and smelt it. Why, it was ink!

Mr. Dickens was about to start into a wail of remorse, but was
checked by a whisper from Copperfield. It was very low and quiet, but
amazingly self-possessed, and urgent. Mr. Dickens knelt his head as
closely as he could. “Remember Sydney Carton has the key…” There was a
strangely placid expression on his face, quite out of sorts with his
bodily condition. Such a contrast gave Mr. Dickens enough hope to ask,
“Who did this to you? Was it – “

“It was no one I know,” David Copperfield replied, weakly. “Do not
distress yourself. Unlike you, I know what fate awaits me. You have
written me a heaven, you know, and there is an Angel in it, I think.”
He gestured for Mr. Dickens to come closer, which he did, and he
murmured confidentially, with a smile, “I read ahead in my story while
you were asleep. Pray do not distress yourself, but find Pickwick, and
Sydney Carton, or all else will be in vain!”

Mr. Dickens, alone in the street, gasped, and shuddered, as though it
were he who had been mortally wounded – and perhaps a part of him was,
with the harm of his creation. But as soon as David Copperfield uttered
this final message, Mr. Dickens saw a shudder pass over him and –
strangest of all! – his body disintegrated before Mr. Dickens' very
eyes, and blew away like pieces of shredded paper! It was his soul,
bound up in ink and punctuation and paper, escaping this world at last.

Now naturally, this was not good for Mr. Dickens’ nerves – we tremble
even as we write it. David Copperfield had succeeded in calming Mr.
Dickens’ fears for Copperfield’s own soul, which had left this world
most evocatively, and more beautifully than a true human, but that was
little consolation. The streets, at this hour, were deserted; the
carriage was long gone, though he had salvaged the carpetbag and the
revolver. He looked around in desperation. For, though he was the
Inimitable, Charles Dickens was out of place in a world he could not
control. And, what was worse, the world he had made was out to control
him. To destroy him!

****

Before we leave this part of our story, we must return, for a
moment, to focus our attention on a certain crowd that has congregated
on a London street corner. The building standing there – the solemn one
made of blackened brick, and towering over its neighbors as though it
had an inbred right to assert its importance – is quite familiar – in
fact, it was the recent residence of our author.

In the time of our story, the third-floor window of the establishment
had a peculiar appearance about it – an appearance of greater blackness
than the rest of the place; and the crowd outside had been speculating
on the cause of this for some time. Wait! Hush! The policeman was
coming out, and a bit of a maid accompanied him.

Immediately, all the 120 voices in the crowd simultaneously screamed out, “What happened?”

After putting his thumbs in his coat pockets, and hedging a bit in
an official sort of way, the policeman (a great, greasy fellow, with a
reddish mustache and a set of teeth entirely lacking military order) at
last explained, “The room caught on fire last night. Everything in it
is burned and blackened – furniture, walls, the bed, everything!”

This was unsettling.

“But what is mos’ ex-tra-or-di-nar-y,” the maid interjected, with
careful pronunciation and a dramatic flair, “is tha’ tha’ was the room
CHARLES DICKENS was stayin’ in las’ night – and….he was no’ there!”

There was a general gasp from the crowd, and a din arose as they talked amongst themselves, excitedly.

“And it was a good thing he weren’t there, too,” the policeman
muttered, “else he would have been burnt to a crisp. Our reports tell
us that the room started smoking at about one-o’-clock last night, by
which time Mr. Dickens had already exited the building, though he had
entered last night by ten-o’-clock, the landlady tells us. We suspect
foul play in the matter. Now then!! That’s all! Clear away, you
vagabonds!” And with great and unexpected speed he immediately pitched
into the crowd and cracked his club over the head of an unfortunate
street urchin, as a show of force.

“So that was the blackening of the window, from the fire and soot that
poured out of it,” one man of the crowd said, conversationally, to his
neighbor, as he made preparations to depart. This neighbor, though fat
and rather slick of appearance, and disappearing into his white
stick-up collar with an air of absurdity, was nevertheless a very
modest sort of gentleman, who inclined his head and replied, rather
piously, “It is by the grace of our Heavenly author that he was not
there! Imagine, the criminal – for criminal there must be – must have
deliberately targeted him! The author would have burnt, writhing in
there, or at least choked to his death from the smoke, and never would
have seen the light of day again – but, fortunately for the world of
literati, that has been prevented.” He clasped his hands and looked up
to heaven, as if thankfully invoking his Creator for sparing that
literary Inimitable.

Yet this foolish show of piety continued so long that the crowd
dissolved, leaving our shock-haired gentleman rather alone. It was only
then that he muttered, in a very different tone, “He has escaped,
somehow! I must consult my humble friend upon this matter.” And saying
thus, he too disappeared from the street corner…

ON TO PART TWO…