I remembered the short ladder leaning against the low wall and felt
sure he had arranged his criminal approach long before.
"The collapse of the big chimney-pot ought to have been the culmination
of my chaotic feelings; but, to tell the truth, it produced a sudden sense
of comedy and even of comfort. I could not recall what connected this
abrupt bit of housebreaking with some quaint but still kindly fancies.
Then I remembered the delightful and uproarious scenes of roofs and chimneys
in the harlequinades of my childhood, and was darkly and quite irrationally
comforted by a sense of unsubstantiality in the scene, as if the houses
were of lath and paint and pasteboard, and were only meant to be tumbled
in and out of by policemen and pantaloons. The law-breaking of my companion
seemed not only seriously excusable, but even comically excusable.
Who were all these pompous preposterous people with their footmen and their
foot-scrapers, their chimney-pots and their chimney-pot hats, that they
should prevent a poor clown from getting sausages if he wanted them?
One would suppose that property was a serious thing. I had reached,
as it were, a higher level of that mountainous and vapourous visions,
the heaven of a higher levity.
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