I laughed aloud,
and felt amazingly glad. Besides, it really seemed, too, as if I only
needed this little happy hour, this moment of airy rapture, without a care
on any side, to get my head into working order once more.
I seated myself at the table, and set to work at my allegory; it
progressed swimmingly, better than it had done for a long time; not very
fast, 'tis true, but it seemed to me that what I did was altogether
first-rate. I worked, too, for the space of an hour without getting tired.
I am sitting working at a most crucial point in this Allegory of a
Conflagration in a Bookshop. It appears to me so momentous a point, that
all the rest I have written counted as nothing in comparison. I was,
namely, just about to weave in, in a downright profound way, this thought.
It was not books that were burning, it was brains, human brains; and I
intended to make a perfect Bartholomew's night of these burning brains.
Suddenly my door was flung open with a jerk and in much haste; my landlady
came sailing in. She came straight over to the middle of the room, she did
not even pause on the threshold.
I gave a little hoarse cry; it was just as if I had received a blow.
"What?" said she, "I thought you said something. We have got a traveller,
and we must have this room for him. You will have to sleep downstairs with
us tonight. Yes; you can have a bed to yourself there too.
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