"And all alike--all
alike. What comedians! For acting one need not go to the Duke's or the
King's. One may see it at one's own board, by one's own hearth. Acting,
nothing but acting! And I thought that in the universal mass of falsehood
and folly there were some rare stars, dwelling apart here and there, and
that she was one of them. An idle dream! Nature has made them all in one
mould, and it is but by means and opportunity that they differ."
Higher and higher rose that vast sheet of vivid colour; and now every tower
and steeple was bathed in rosy light, or else stood black against the
radiant sky--towers illuminated, towers in densest shadow; the slim spars
of ships showing as if drawn with pen and ink on a sulphur background--a
scene of surpassing splendour and terror. Fareham had seen Flemish villages
blazing, Flemish citadels exploding, their fragments hurled skyward in a
blue flame of gunpowder; but never this vast arch of crimson, glowing and
growing before his astonished gaze, as he paddled the boat inshore, and
stood up to watch the great disaster.
"God has remembered the new Sodom," he said savagely. "He punished us with
pestilence, and we took no heed. And now He tries us with fire.
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