a Conflagration

'May the windows of the Human Soul never again look upon such a Conflagration as devoured my three Houses with all their precious Paintings, Chests of Linen, Wool and Silk, copper and tin Vessels, silver Candlesticks, and Ornaments of Gold and Gems, so that it is now impossible to find any Trace of these things among the Ruins. I cannot describe how eighty Rolls of paper, intended for the printing of my new Book, flew flaming through the Air, carried off by the Wind. And if God had not commanded the Wind to turn in its Course, all of the Old City of Danzig would surely have burned to the Ground.'

'Hevelius, a Danzig beer brewer, in a letter to the Sun King, Louis XIV. Quoted by Rudolf Thiel in And There was Light, translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, 1957.