Hideously frequent is this nonsense now become with me--in streets of towns--in deep nooks of the country: the invincible assurance that, if I but turn the head, and glance _there_--at a certain fixed spot--I shall surely see--I _must_ see--a man. And glance I must, glance I must, though I perish: and when I glance, though my hairs creep and stiffen like stirring amobse, yet in my eyes, I know, is monarch indignation against the intruder, and my neck stands stiff as sovereignty itself, and on my brow sits more than all the lordship of Persepolis and Iraz. To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do not know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man to be alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but the _only_ natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and faddists. That the whole world should have been made for _me_ alone--that London should have been built only in order that _I_ might enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning--that all history, and all civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for _my_ pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and wine, of spices and gold--no more extraordinary does it all seem to me than to some little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the possessing of lands which his remote forefathers seized, and slew the occupiers: nor, in reality, is it even so extraordinary, I being alone. But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem _so_ common-place and natural--in nine months. The mind of Adam Jeffson is adaptable. * * * * * I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till finally I was disposed to sleep there. But I had no considerable number of candle-sticks, nor was even sure of candles. I remembered, however, that Peter Peters, three doors away on the other side of the street, had had four handsome silver candelabra in his drawing-room, each containing six stems; and I said to myself: 'I will search for candles in the kitchen, and if I find any, I will go and get Peter Peters' candelabra, and sleep here.'