"He's a raging maniac!" one said.

"It took six policemen to carry him out of
the house by force, and put him in a cell for
security; and he only keeps on crying out
'Throw me in the flames!'"

"When Weston went back to see if he
could save the double-bass," said a property-
man, " he found two Don Caesar de Bazans
dancing the polka together and everything is
a blaze, and he had some job to get 'em out;
and when they come into the street all the
crowd set on 'em and hooted 'em, and cried
out, ' Who burnt the theatre?' ' Who set it
a fire?' they cried; and they was close
upon having a nasty time of it, if they hadn't
gone into the coffee-shop."

"'Arry's took to it worse than any,"
observed an evident super; " he says his
benefit's ruined, but they give him a sleepy-
draught, and he's up in that room there,
where the blind's down—that's where he
is."

Putting the benefit and the house together
I found out who 'Arry was, and hoped he
would recover for the evening's rally.

"All the tricks are saved," said another;
'' and they found the goose down Mrs.
Warner's rails at the back of the Bedford, just as
if nothing had happened."

I felt that this must be the goose who
came out of the flat portfolio, and I rejoiced
at his preservation. It struck me, however,
that there were still some guinea-pigs and
pigeons to account for. I was less anxious
about the canary who was fired out of the
gun, rammed down with a gold watch for a
wad, because he was, in a degree, inured to
surprises and explosions.

The group moved on—at the order of a
myrmidon—and I was left to my own
reflections. I remembered the scene in the
pantomime lately played there, where the
knockers spontaneously aroused the people
in the fire scene. With that belief in
actuality which we can never separate from a
pantomime, I wondered if all the knockers
begun to rap as usual when the real fire
broke out, confusing that power with the
necromancer's bell in the gallery, and table in
the pit. Then I lamented—I believe with
everybody—the really miserable end of such
a splendid building. If it was fated to be
burnt down, the fire should have burst out—
provided all could have got away—in the last
scene of Le Prophète, with Mario singing the
drinking song, surrounded by his beautiful
bacchantes, as the flames began to lap and twine
about the gilded doors and costly draperies of
the palace of Munster. But it was saddening
to think of the low, dull, brutal orgy that
had immediately preceded, and perhaps
hastened, the catastrophe. I heard that such
a scene of vicious riot and rampant snobbery
had never before been witnessed in London.

"It's burst out again over the property-
room," said a fireman to his fellow as they
passed.

Here was enough matter for speculation
connected with departed glories. Many were
thinking of the manuscripts, the scores, and
the documents destroyed; my mind
wandered to humbler things. I wondered at what
time was burnt the letter B, that Gennaro cut
with his dagger from over the Borgia's door—
always of a different colour to the "orgia,"
and palpable as to its destination. I
wondered, also, how long it took to melt the
Norma gong; how soon to consume the fish
that were thrown up to the pescatori on the
sunny strand of Portici; how rapidly the
red candles must have melted, that adorned
the chandelier in the act of the Huguenots;
and whether the Der Freischütz owl winked
when the flames deranged his machinery.
And I pictured the general and hurried
destruction of the Druids' beards, and Mario's
long chocolate-coloured boots, and the bright
breastplate in which Soldi sang the Rataplan
—the Somnambula mill-wheel, with the
candlestick that Viardot let fall from it, and the
padded bricks she pushed aside with her
feet when the plank cracked; the sword that
Tagliafico cracked across his knee, when he
declared he was not an assassin—the profile
horse of the statue in Don Giovanni; and the
pony chaise that brought on Ronconi in the
Elisir.

A thundering crash interrupted the
meditations.

"Down at last!" said a fireman.

"What's down?" I asked.

"The top-stairs of the perscenium boxes;
they've been hanging by nothing ever since
it broke out."

I remembered the stairs. I had gone up
them the last time I was at the theatre,
getting there late to join some friends—after
a public occupation of my own—to see the end
of the Favorita. And this was really within
these four smoking, blackened, boundaries!
It was here that I had beheld that most
impressive scene that had scarcely ever been
surpassed upon the stage—that beautiful
abbey with its lofty, half-ruined roof, through
the chinks of which the grey dull morning
light was beginning to steal, in fine contrast
with the dim lamps hung along the aisles, the
illuminated windows of the chapel in which
the early mass was being performed, and the
glowworm glimmer of the lanterns, passing
amongst the columned walls of the cemetery,
where the monks were digging their own
graves. I recalled the rapt aud breathless
silence of the vast and brilliant audience, as
the frail and beautiful, and broken-hearted
woman came in her monastic disguise to seek
him whom alone she loved in the world; and
how in that wildly, despairing and lovely
burst of song she poured out her life at his
feet. All the real and actual dissolved away
—the ruins, the crowd, the torrents of clear
water in the kennels, the prison-van at the
door of the police-office; and in their place
the grim circle of monks were crowding