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