ÉMILE ZOLA (continued 9)

He looked about him for Marthe. He could no longer recognise the garden. It seemed to him to be larger; to be empty and grey and like a cemetery. The big box-plants had vanished, the lettuces were no longer there, the fruit-trees had disappeared. He turned round again, came back, and knelt down to see if the slugs had eaten everything up. The disappearance of the box-plants, the death of their lofty greenery, caused him an especial pang, as though some of the actual life of the house had departed. Who was it that had killed them? What villain had been there uprooting everything and tearing away even the tufts of violets which he had planted at the foot of the terrace? Indignation arose in him as he contemplated all this ruin.

'Marthe, Marthe, where are you?' he called again.

He looked for her in the little conservatory to the right of the terrace. It was littered with the dead dry corpses of the box-plants. They were piled up in bundles amidst the stumps of the fruit-trees. In one corner was Désirée's bird-cage, hanging from a nail, with the door broken off and the wire-work sadly torn. The madman stepped back, overwhelmed with fear as though he had opened the door of a vault. Stammering, his throat on fire, he went back to the terrace and paced up and down before the door and the shuttered windows. His increasing rage gave his limbs the suppleness of a wild beast's. He braced himself up and stepped along noiselessly, trying to find some opening. An air-hole into the cellar was sufficient for him. He squeezed himself together and glided inside with the nimbleness of a cat, scraping the wall with his nails as he went. At last he was in the house.

The cellar door was only latched. He made his way through the darkness of the hall, groping past the walls with his hands, and pushing the kitchen door open. Some matches were on a shelf at the left. He went straight to this shelf, and struck a light to enable him to get a lamp which stood upon the mantelpiece without breaking anything. Then he looked about him. There appeared to have been a big meal there that evening. The kitchen was in a state of festive disorder. The table was strewn with dirty plates and dishes and glasses. There was a litter of pans, still warm, on the sink and the chairs and the very floor. A coffee-pot that had been forgotten was also boiling away beside the stove, slightly tilted like a tipsy man. Mouret put it straight and then tidily arranged the pans. He smelt them, sniffed at the drops of liquor that remained in the glasses, and counted the dishes and plates with growing irritation. This was no longer his quiet orderly kitchen; it seemed as if a hotelful of food had been wasted there. All this guzzling disorder reeked of indigestion.

'Marthe! Marthe!' he again repeated as he returned into the passage, carrying the lamp as he went; 'answer me, tell me where they have shut you up. We must be off, we must be off at once.'

He searched for her in the dining-room. The two cupboards to the right and left of the stove were open. From a burst bag of grey paper on the edge of a shelf some lumps of sugar had fallen upon the floor. Higher up Mouret could see a bottle of brandy with the neck broken and plugged with a piece of rag. Then he got upon a chair to examine the cupboards. They were half empty. The jars of preserved fruits had been attacked, the jam-pots had been opened and the jam tasted, the fruit had been nibbled, the provisions of all kinds had been gnawed and fouled as though a whole army of rats had been there. Not being able to find Marthe in the closets, Mouret searched all over the room, looking behind the curtains and even underneath the furniture. Fragments of bone and pieces of broken bread lay about the floor; there were marks on the table that had been left by sticky glasses. Then he crossed the hall and went to look for Marthe in the drawing-room. But, as soon as he opened the door, he stopped short. This could not really be his own drawing-room. The bright mauve paper, the red-flowered carpet, the new easy-chairs covered with cerise damask, filled him with amazement. He was afraid to enter a room that did not belong to him, and he closed the door.

'Marthe! Marthe!' he stammered again in accents of despair.

He went back to the middle of the hall, unable to quiet the hoarse panting which was swelling in his throat. Where had he got to, that he could not recognise a single spot? Who had been transforming his house in such a way? His recollections were quite confused. He could only recall some shadows gliding along the hall; two shadows, at first poverty-stricken, soft-spoken, self-suppressing, then tipsy and disreputable-looking; two shadows that leered and sniggered. He raised his lamp, the wick of which was burning smokily, and thereupon the shadows grew bigger, lengthened upon the walls, mounted aloft beside the staircase and filled and preyed upon the whole house. Some horrid filth, some fermenting putrescence had found its way into the place and had rotted the woodwork, rusted the iron and split the walls. Then he seemed to hear the house crumbling like a ceiling from dampness, and to see it melting like a handful of salt thrown into a basin of hot water.

But up above there sounded peals of ringing laughter which made his hair stand on end. He put the lamp down and went upstairs to look for Marthe. He crept up noiselessly on his hands and knees with all the nimbleness and stealth of a wolf. When he reached the landing of the first floor, he knelt down in front of the door of the bedroom. A ray of light streamed from underneath it. Marthe must be going to bed.

'What a jolly bed this is of theirs!' Olympe was just exclaiming; 'you can quite bury yourself in it, Honoré; I am right up to my eyes in feathers.'

She laughed and stretched herself and sprang about amidst the bed-clothes.

'Ever since I've been here,' she continued, 'I've been longing to sleep in this bed. It made me almost ill wishing for it. I could never see that lath of a landlady of ours get into it without feeling a furious desire to throw her on to the floor and put myself in her place. One gets quite warm directly. It's just as though I were wrapped in cotton-wool.'

Trouche, who had not yet gone to bed, was examining the bottles on the dressing-table.

'She has got all kinds of scents,' he said.

'Well, as she isn't here, we may just as well treat ourselves to the best room!' continued Olympe. 'There's no danger of her coming back and disturbing us. I have fastened the doors up. You will be getting cold, Honoré.'

But Trouche now opened the drawers and began groping about amongst the linen.

'Put this on, it's smothered with lace,' he said, tossing a night-dress to Olympe. 'I shall wear this red handkerchief myself.'

Then, as Trouche was at last getting into bed, Olympe said to him:

'Put the grog on the night-table. We need not get up and go to the other end of the room for it. There, my dear, we are like real householders now!'

They lay down side by side, with the eider-down quilt drawn up to their chins.

'I ate a deuced lot this evening,' said Trouche after a short pause.

'And drank a lot, too!' added Olympe with a laugh. 'I feel very cosy and snug. But the tiresome part is that my mother is always interfering with us. She has been quite awful to-day. I can't take a single step about the house without her being at me. There's really no advantage in our landlady going off if mother means to play the policeman. She has quite spoilt my day's enjoyment.'

'Hasn't the Abbé some idea of going away?' asked Trouche after another short interval of silence. 'If he is made a bishop, he will be obliged to leave the house to us.'

'One can't be sure of that,' Olympe petulantly replied. 'I dare say mother means to keep it. But how jolly we should be here, all by ourselves! I would make our landlady sleep upstairs in my brother's room; I'd persuade her that it was healthier than this. Pass me the glass, Honoré.'

They both took a drink and then covered themselves up afresh.

'Ah!' said Trouche, 'I'm afraid it won't be so easy to get rid of them, but we can try, at any rate. I believe the Abbé would have changed his quarters before if he had not been afraid that the landlady would have considered herself deserted and have made a rumpus. I think I'll try to talk the landlady over. I'll tell her a lot of tales to persuade her to turn them out.'

He took another drink.

'Oh! leave the matter to me,' replied Olympe; 'I'll get mother and Ovide turned out, as they've treated us so badly.'

'Well, if you don't succeed,' said Trouche, 'I can easily concoct some scandal about the Abbé and Madame Mouret; and then he will be absolutely obliged to shift his quarters.'

Olympe sat up in bed.

'That's a splendid idea,' she said, 'that is! We must set about it to-morrow. Before a month is over, this room will be ours. I must really give you a kiss for the idea.'

They then both grew very merry, and began to plan how they would arrange the room. They would change the place of the chest of drawers, they said; and they would bring up a couple of easy-chairs from the drawing-room. However, their speech was gradually growing huskier, and at last they became silent.

'There! you're off now!' murmured Olympe, after a time. 'You're snoring with your eyes open! Well, let me come to the other side, so that, at any rate, I can finish my novel. I'm not sleepy, if you are.'

She got up and rolled him like a mere lump towards the wall, and then began to read. But, before she had finished a page, she turned her head uneasily towards the door. She fancied she could hear a strange noise on the landing. At this she cried petulantly to her husband, giving him a dig in the ribs with her elbow:

'You know very well that I don't like that sort of joke. Don't play the wolf; anyone would fancy that there was somebody at the door. Well, go on if it pleases you; you are very irritating.'

Then she angrily absorbed herself in her book again, after sucking a slice of lemon left in her glass.

With the same stealthy movements as before, Mouret now quitted the door of the bedroom, where he had remained crouching. He climbed to the second floor and knelt before Abbé Faujas's door, squeezing himself close to the key-hole. He choked down Marthe's name, that again rose in his throat, and examined with glistening eye the corners of the priest's room, to satisfy himself that nobody was shut up there. The big bare room was in deep shadow; a small lamp which stood upon the table cast just a circular patch of light upon the floor, and the Abbé himself, who was writing, seemed like a big black stain in the midst of that yellow glare. After he had scrutinised the curtains and the chest of drawers, Mouret's gaze fell upon the iron bedstead, upon which lay the priest's hat, looking like the locks of a woman's hair. There was no doubt that Marthe was there, thought Mouret. Hadn't the Trouches said that she was to have that room? But as he continued gazing he saw that the bed was undisturbed, and looked, with its cold, white coverings, like a tombstone. His eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. However, Abbé Faujas appeared to hear some sound, for he glanced at the door. When the maniac saw the priest's calm face his eyes reddened, a slight foam appeared at the corner of his lips, and it was with difficulty that he suppressed a shout. At last he went away on his hands and knees again, down the stairs and along the passages, still repeating in low tones:

'Marthe! Marthe!'

He searched for her through the whole house; in Rose's room, which he found empty; in the Trouches' apartments, which were filled with the spoils of the other rooms; in the children's old rooms, where he burst into tears as his hands came across a pair of worn-out boots which had belonged to Désirée. He went up and down the stairs, clinging on to the banisters, and gliding along the walls, stealthily exploring every apartment with the extraordinary dexterity of a scheming maniac. Soon there was not a single corner of the place from the cellar to the attic which he had not investigated. Marthe was nowhere in the house; nor were the children there, nor Rose. The house was empty; the house might crumble to pieces.

Mouret sat down upon the stairs. He choked down the panting which, in spite of himself, continued to distend his throat. With his back against the banisters, and his eyes wide open in the darkness, he sat waiting, absorbed in a scheme which he was patiently thinking out. His senses became so acute that he could hear the slightest sounds that arose in the house. Down below him snored Trouche, while Olympe turned over the pages of her book with a slight rubbing of her fingers against the paper. On the second floor Abbé Faujas's pen made a scratching sound like the crawling of an insect, while, in the adjoining room, Madame Faujas's heavy breathing seemed like an accompaniment to that shrill music. Mouret sat for an hour with his ears sharply strained. Olympe was the first of the wakeful ones to succumb to sleep. He could hear her novel fall upon the floor. Then Abbé Faujas laid down his pen and undressed himself, quietly gliding about his room in his slippers. He slipped off his clothes in silence, and did not even make the bed creak as he got into it. Ah! the house had gone to rest at last. But the madman could tell from the sound of the Abbé's breathing that he was yet awake. Gradually that breathing grew fuller, and at last the whole house slept.

Mouret waited on for another half-hour. He still listened with strained ears, as though he could hear the four sleepers descending into deeper and deeper slumber. The house lay wrapped in darkness and unconsciousness. Then the maniac rose up and slowly made his way into the passage.

'Marthe isn't here any longer; the house isn't here; nothing is here,' he murmured.

He opened the door that led into the garden, and went down to the little conservatory. When he got there he methodically removed the big dry box-plants, and carried them upstairs in enormous armfuls, piling them in front of the doors of the Trouches and the Faujases. He felt, too, a craving for a bright light, and he went into the kitchen and lighted all the lamps, which he placed upon the tables in the various rooms and on the landings, and along the passages. Then he brought up the rest of the box-plants. They were soon piled higher than the doors. As he was making his last journey with them he raised his eyes and noticed the windows. Next he went out into the garden again, took the trunks of the fruit-trees and stacked them up under the windows, skilfully arranging for little currents of air which should make them blaze freely. The stack seemed to him but a small one, however.

'There is nothing left,' he murmured: 'there must be nothing left.'

Then, as a thought struck him, he went down into the cellar, and recommenced his journeying backwards and forwards. He was now carrying up the supply of fuel for the winter, the coal, the vine-branches, and the wood. The pile under the windows gradually grew bigger. As he carefully arranged each bundle of vine-branches, he was thrilled with livelier satisfaction. He next proceeded to distribute the fuel through the rooms on the ground-floor, and left a heap of it in the entrance-hall, and another heap in the kitchen. Then he piled the furniture atop of the different heaps. An hour sufficed him to get his work finished. He had taken his boots off, and had glided about all over the house, with heavily laden arms, so dexterously that he had not let a single piece of wood fall roughly to the floor. He seemed endowed with new life, with extraordinary nimbleness of motion. As far as this one firmly fixed idea of his went, he was perfectly in possession of his senses.

When all was ready, he lingered for a moment to enjoy the sight of his work. He went from pile to pile, took pleasure in viewing the square-set pyres, and gently rubbed his hands together with an appearance of extreme satisfaction. As a few fragments of coal had fallen on the stairs, he ran off to get a brush, and carefully swept the black dust from the steps. Then he completed his inspection with the careful precision of a man who means to do things as they ought to be done. He gradually became quite excited with satisfaction, and dropped on to his hands and knees again, and began to hop about, panting more heavily in his savage joy.

At last he took a vine-branch and set fire to the heaps. First of all he lighted the pile on the terrace underneath the windows. Then he leapt back into the house and set fire to the heaps in the drawing-room and dining-room, and then to those in the kitchen and the hall. Next he sprang up the stairs and flung the remains of his blazing brand upon the piles that lay against the doors of the Trouches and Faujases. An ever-increasing rage was thrilling him, and the lurid blaze of the fire brought his madness to a climax. He twice came down the stairs with terrific leaps, bounded about through the thick smoke, fanning the flames with his breath, and casting handfuls of coal upon them. At the sight of the flames, already mounting to the ceilings of the rooms, he sat down every now and then and laughed and clapped his hands with all his strength.

The house was now roaring like an over-crammed stove. The flames burst out at all points, at once, with a violence that split the floors. But the maniac made his way upstairs again through the sheets of fire, singeing his hair and blackening his clothes as he went. And he posted himself on the second-floor, crouching down on his hands and knees with his growling, beast-like head thrown forward. He was keeping guard over the landing, and his eyes never quitted the priest's door.

'Ovide! Ovide!' shrieked a panic-stricken voice.

Madame Faujas's door at the end of the landing was suddenly opened and the flames swept into her room with the roar of a tempest. The old woman appeared in the midst of the fire. Stretching out her arms, she hurled aside the blazing brands and sprang on to the landing, pulling and pushing away with her hands and feet the burning heap that blocked up her son's door, and calling all the while to the priest despairingly. The maniac crouched still lower down, his eyes gleaming while he continued to growl.

'Wait for me! Don't get out of the window!' cried Madame Faujas, striking at her son's door.

She threw her weight against it, and the charred door yielded easily. She reappeared holding her son in her arms. He had taken time to put on his cassock, and was choking, half suffocated by the smoke.

'I am going to carry you, Ovide,' she cried, with energetic determination; 'Hold well on to my shoulders, and clutch hold of my hair if you feel you are slipping. Don't trouble, I'll carry you through it all.'

She hoisted him upon her shoulders as though he were a child, and this sublime mother, this old peasant woman, carrying her devotion to death itself, did not so much as totter beneath the crushing weight of that big swooning, unresisting body. She extinguished the burning brands with her naked feet and made a free passage through the flames by brushing them aside with her open hand so that her son might not even be touched by them. But just as she was about to go downstairs, the maniac, whom she had not observed, sprang upon the Abbé Faujas and tore him from off her shoulders. His muttered growl turned into a wild shriek, while he writhed in a fit at the head of the stairs. He belaboured the priest, tore him with his nails and strangled him.

'Marthe! Marthe!' he bellowed.

Then he rolled down the blazing stairs, still with the priest in his grasp; while Madame Faujas, who had driven her teeth into his throat, drained his blood. The Trouches perished in their drunken stupor without a groan; and the house, gutted and undermined, collapsed in the midst of a cloud of sparks.

XXIII

Macquart did not find Porquier at home, and so the doctor only reached Madame Rougon's at nearly half-past twelve. The whole house was still in commotion. Rougon himself was the only one who had not got out of bed. Emotion had a killing effect upon him, said he. Félicité, who was still seated in the same armchair by Marthe's bedside, rose to meet the doctor.

'Oh, my dear doctor, we are so very anxious!' she murmured. 'The poor child has never stirred since we put her to bed there. Her hands are already quite cold. I have kept them in my own, but it has done no good.'

Doctor Porquier scanned Marthe's face, and then, without making any further examination, he compressed his lips and made a vague gesture with his hands.

'My dear Madame Rougon,' he said, 'you must summon up your courage.'

Félicité burst into sobs.

'The end is at hand,' the doctor continued in a lower voice. 'I have been expecting this sad termination for a long time past; I must confess so much now. Both of poor Madame Mouret's lungs are diseased, and in her case phthisis has been complicated by nervous derangement.'

He took a seat, and a smile played about his lips, the smile of the polished doctor who thinks that even in the presence of death itself suave politeness is demanded of him.

'Don't give way and make yourself ill, my dear lady. The catastrophe was inevitable and any little accident might have hastened it. I should imagine that poor Madame Mouret must have been subject to coughing when she was very young; wasn't she? I should say that the germs of the disease have been spreading within her for a good many years past. Latterly, and especially within the last three years, phthisis has been making frightful strides in her. How pious and devotional she was! I have been quite touched to see her passing away in such sanctity. Well, well, the decrees of Providence are inscrutable; science is very often quite powerless.'

Seeing that Madame Rougon still continued to weep, he poured out upon her the tenderest consolations, and pressed her to take a cup of lime-flower water to calm herself.

'Don't distress yourself, I beg you,' he continued. 'I assure you that she has lost all sense of pain. She will continue sleeping as tranquilly as she is doing at present, and will only regain consciousness just before death. I won't leave you; I will remain here, though my services are quite unavailing. I shall stay, however, as a friend, my dear lady, as a friend.'

He settled himself comfortably for the night in an easy chair. Félicité grew a little calmer. When Doctor Porquier gave her to understand that Marthe had only a few more hours to live, she thought of sending for Serge from the Seminary, which was near at hand. She asked Rose to go there for him, but the cook at first refused.

'Do you want to kill the poor little fellow as well?' she exclaimed. 'It would be too great a shock for him to be called up in the middle of the night to come to see a dead woman. I won't be his murderer!'

Rose still retained bitter feelings against her mistress. Ever since the latter had been lying there dying she had paced round the bed, angrily knocking about the cups and the hot-water bottles.

'Was there any sense in doing such a thing as madame did?' she cried. 'She has only herself to blame if she has got her death by going to see the master. And now everything is turned topsy-turvy and we are all distracted. No, no; I don't approve at all of the little fellow being startled out of his sleep in such a way.'

In the end, however, she consented to go to the Seminary. Doctor Porquier had stretched himself out in front of the fire, and with half-closed eyes continued to address consolatory words to Madame Rougon. A slight rattling sound began to be heard in Marthe's chest. Uncle Macquart, who had not appeared again since he had gone away two good hours previously, now gently pushed the door open.

'Where have you been?' Félicité asked him, taking him into a corner of the room.

He told her that he had been to put his horse and trap up at The Three Pigeons. But his eyes sparkled so vividly, and there was such a look of diabolical cunning about him, that she was filled with a thousand suspicions. She forgot her dying daughter for the moment, for she scented some trickery which it was imperative for her to get to the bottom of.

'Anyone would imagine that you had been following and playing the spy upon somebody,' she said, looking at his muddy trousers. 'You are hiding something from me, Macquart. It is not right of you. We have always treated you very well.'

'Oh, very well, indeed!' sniggered Macquart. 'I'm glad you've told me so. Rougon is a skinflint. He treated me like the lowest of the low in the matter of that cornfield. Where is Rougon? Snoozing comfortably in his bed, eh? It's little he cares for all the trouble one takes about the family.'

The smile which accompanied these last words greatly disquieted Félicité. She looked him keenly in the face.

'What trouble have you taken for the family?' she asked. 'Do you grudge having brought poor Marthe back from Les Tulettes? I tell you again that all that business has a very suspicious look. I have been questioning Rose, and it seems to me that you wanted to come straight here. It surprises me that you did not knock more loudly in the Rue Balande; they would have come and opened the door. I'm not saying this because I don't want my dear child to be here; I am glad to think, on the contrary, that she will, at any rate, die among her own people, and will have only loving faces about her.'

Macquart seemed greatly surprised at this speech, and interrupted her by saying with an uneasy manner:

'I thought that you and Abbé Faujas were the best of friends.'

She made no reply, but stepped up to Marthe, whose breathing was now becoming more difficult. When she left the bedside again, she saw Macquart pulling one of the curtains aside and peering out into the dark night, while rubbing the moist window-pane with his hand.

'Don't go away to-morrow without coming and talking to me,' she said to him. 'I want to have all this cleared up.'

'Just as you like,' he replied. 'You are very difficult to please. First you like people, and then you don't like them. I always keep on in the same regular easy-going way.'

He was evidently very much vexed to find that the Rougons no longer made common cause with Abbé Faujas. He tapped the window with the tips of his fingers, and still kept his eyes on the black night. Just at that moment the sky was reddened by a sudden glow.

'What is that?' asked Félicité.

Macquart opened the window and looked out.

'It looks like a fire,' he said unconcernedly. 'There is something burning behind the Sub-Prefecture.'

There were sounds of commotion on the Place. A servant came into the room with a scared look and told them that the house of madame's daughter was on fire. It was believed, he continued, that madame's son-in-law, he whom they had been obliged to shut up, had been seen walking about the garden carrying a burning vine-branch. The most unfortunate part of the matter was that there seemed no hope of saving the lodgers. Félicité turned sharply round, and pondered for a minute, keeping her eyes fixed on Macquart. Then she clearly understood everything.

'You promised me solemnly,' she said in a low voice, 'that you would conduct yourself quietly and decently when we set you up in your little house at Les Tulettes. You have everything that you want, and are quite independent. This is abominable, disgraceful, I tell you! How much did Abbé Fenil give you to let François escape?'

Macquart was going to break out angrily, but Madame Rougon made him keep silent. She seemed much more uneasy about the consequences of the matter than indignant at the crime itself.

'And what a terrible scandal there will be, if it all comes out,' she continued. 'Have we ever refused you anything? We will talk together to-morrow, and we will speak again of that cornfield about which you are so bitter against us. If Rougon were to hear of such a thing as this, he would die of grief.'

Macquart could not help smiling. Still he defended himself energetically, and swore that he knew nothing about the matter, and had had no hand in it. Then, as the sky grew redder, and Doctor Porquier had already gone downstairs he left the room, saying, as if he were anxiously curious about the matter:

'I am going to see what is happening.'

It was Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies who had given the alarm. There had been an evening party at the Sub-Prefecture, and he was just going to bed at a few minutes before one o'clock when he perceived a strange red reflection upon the ceiling of his bedroom. Going to the window, he was struck with astonishment at seeing a great fire burning in the Mourets' garden, while a shadowy form, which he did not at first recognise, danced about in the midst of the smoke, brandishing a blazing vine-branch. Almost immediately afterwards flames burst out from all the openings on the ground-floor. The sub-prefect hurriedly put on his trousers again, called his valet, and sent the porter off to summon the fire-brigade and the authorities. Then, before going to the scene of the disaster, he finished dressing himself and consulted his mirror to make sure that his moustache was quite as it should be. He was the first to arrive in the Rue Balande. The street was absolutely deserted, save for a couple of cats which were rushing across it.

'They will let themselves be broiled like cutlets in there!' thought Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, astonished at the quiet, sleepy appearance of the house on the street side, where as yet there was no sign of the conflagration.

He knocked loudly at the door, but could hear nothing except the roaring of the fire in the well of the staircase. Then he knocked at Monsieur Rastoil's door. There piercing screams were heard, hurried rustlings to and fro, banging of doors and stifled calls.

'Aurélie, cover up your shoulders!' cried the presiding judge, who rushed out on to the pathway, followed by Madame Rastoil and her younger daughter, the one who was still unmarried. In her hurry, Aurélie had thrown over her shoulders a cloak of her father's, which left her arms bare. She turned very red as she caught sight of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies.

'What a terrible disaster!' stammered the presiding judge. 'Everything will be burnt down. The wall of my bedroom is quite hot already. The two houses almost join. Ah! my dear sub-prefect, I haven't even stopped to remove the time-pieces. We must organise assistance. We can't stand by and let all our belongings be destroyed in an hour or two.'

Madame Rastoil, scantily clothed in a dressing-gown, was bewailing her drawing-room furniture, which she had only just had newly covered. By this time, however, several neighbours had appeared at their windows. The presiding judge summoned them to his assistance, and commenced to remove his effects from his house. He made the time-pieces his own particular charge, and brought them out and deposited them on the pathway opposite. When the easy-chairs from the drawing-room were carried out, he made his wife and daughter sit down in them, and the sub-prefect remained by their side to reassure them.

'Make yourselves easy, ladies,' he said. 'The engine will be here directly, and then a vigorous attack will be made upon the fire. I think I may undertake to promise that your house will be saved.'

All at once the window-panes of the Mourets' house burst, and the flames broke out from the first floor. The street was illumined by a bright glow; it was as light as at midday. A drummer could be heard passing across the Place of the Sub-Prefecture, some distance off, sounding the alarm. A number of men ran up, and a chain was formed to pass on the buckets of water; but there were no buckets; and still the engine did not arrive. In the midst of the general consternation Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, without leaving the two ladies, shouted out orders in a loud voice.

'Leave a free passage! The chain is too closely formed down there! Keep yourselves two feet apart!'

Then he turned to Aurélie and said in a low voice:

'I am very much surprised that the engine has not arrived yet. It is a new engine. This will be the first time it has been used. I sent the porter off immediately, and I told him also to call at the police-station.'

However, the gendarmes arrived before the end. They kept back the inquisitive spectators, whose numbers increased, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. The sub-prefect himself went to put the chain in a better order, as it was bulging out in the middle, through the pushing of some rough fellows who had run up from the outskirts of the town. The little bell of Saint-Saturnin's was sounding the alarm with cracked notes, and a second drum beat faintly at the bottom of the street near the Mall. At last the engine arrived with a noisy clatter. The crowd made way for it, and the fifteen panting firemen of Plassans came up at a run. However, in spite of Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies's intervention, a quarter of an hour elapsed before the engine was in working order.

'I tell you that it is the piston that won't work!' cried the captain angrily to the sub-prefect, who asserted that the nuts were too tightly screwed.

At last a jet of water shot up, and the crowd gave a sigh of satisfaction. The house was now blazing from the ground-floor to the second-floor like a huge torch. The water hissed as it fell into the burning mass, and the flames, separating into yellow tongues, seemed to shoot up still higher than before. Some of the firemen had mounted on to the roof of the presiding judge's house, and were breaking open the tiles with their picks to limit the progress of the fire.

'It's all up with the place!' muttered Macquart, who stood quietly on the pathway with his hands in his pockets, watching the conflagration with lively interest.

Out in the street a perfect open-air drawing-room had now been established. The easy-chairs were arranged in a semicircle, as though to allow their occupants to view the spectacle at their ease. Madame de Condamin and her husband had just arrived. They had scarcely got back home from the Sub-Prefecture, they said, when they had heard the drum beating the alarm. Monsieur de Bourdeu, Monsieur Maffre, Doctor Porquier, and Monsieur Delangre, accompanied by several members of the municipal council, had also lost no time in hastening to the scene. They all clustered round poor Madame Rastoil and her daughter, trying to comfort and console them with sympathetic remarks. After a time most of them sat down in the easy-chairs, and a general conversation took place, while the engine snorted away half a score yards off and the blazing beams crackled.

'Have you got my watch, my dear?' Madame Rastoil inquired. 'It was on the mantelpiece with the chain.'

'Yes, yes, I have it in my pocket,' replied the president, trembling with emotion. 'I have got the silver as well. I wanted to bring everything away, but the firemen wouldn't let me; they said it was ridiculous.'

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies still showed the greatest calmness and kindly attention.

'I assure you that your house is in no danger at all,' he remarked. 'The force of the fire is spent now. You may go and put your silver back in your dining-room.'

But Monsieur Rastoil would not consent to part with his plate, which he was carrying under his arm, wrapped up in a newspaper.

'All the doors are open,' he stammered, 'and the house is full of people that I know nothing about. They have made a hole in my roof that will cost me a pretty penny to put right again.'

Madame de Condamin now questioned the sub-prefect.

'Oh! how terrible!' she cried. 'I thought that the lodgers had had time to escape. Has nothing been seen of Abbé Faujas?'

'I knocked at the door myself,' said Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies, 'but I couldn't make anyone hear. When the firemen arrived I had the door broken open, and I ordered them to place the ladders against the windows. But nothing was of any use. One of our brave gendarmes who ventured into the hall narrowly escaped being suffocated by the smoke.'

'As Abbé Faujas has been, I suppose! What a horrible death!' said the fair Octavie, with a shudder.

The ladies and gentlemen looked into one another's faces, which showed pale in the flickering light of the conflagration. Doctor Porquier explained to them, however, that death by fire was probably not so painful as they imagined.

'When the fire once reaches one,' he said in conclusion, 'it can only be a matter of few seconds. Of course, it depends, to some extent, upon the violence of the conflagration.'

Monsieur de Condamin was counting upon his fingers.

'Even if Madame Mouret is with her parents, as is asserted, that still leaves four—Abbé Faujas, his mother, his sister, and his brother-in-law. It's a pretty bad business!'

Just then Madame Rastoil inclined her head towards her husband's ear. 'Give me my watch,' she whispered. 'I don't feel easy about it. You are always fidgetting, and you may sit on it.'

Someone now called out that the wind was carrying the sparks towards the Sub-Prefecture, and Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies immediately sprang up, and, apologising for his departure, hastened off to guard against this new danger. Monsieur Delangre was anxious that a last attempt should be made to rescue the victims. But the captain of the fire brigade roughly told him to go up the ladder himself if he thought such a thing possible; he had never seen such a fire before, he declared. The devil himself must have lighted it, for the house was burning like a bundle of chips, at all points at once. The mayor, followed by some kindly disposed persons, then went round into the Impasse des Chevillottes. Perhaps, he said, it would be possible to get to the windows from the garden side.

'It would be very magnificent if it were not so sad,' remarked Madame de Condamin, who was now calmer.

The fire was certainly becoming a superb spectacle. Showers of sparks rushed up in the midst of huge blue flames; chasms of glowing red showed themselves behind each of the gaping windows, while the smoke rolled gently away in a huge purplish cloud, like the smoke from Bengal lights set burning at some display of fireworks. The ladies and gentlemen were comfortably seated in their chairs, leaning on their elbows and stretching out their legs as they watched the spectacle before them; and whenever there was a more violent burst of flames than usual, there came an interval of silence, broken by exclamations. At some distance off, in the midst of the flickering brilliance which every now and then lighted up masses of serried heads, there rose the murmur of the crowd, the sound of gushing water, a general confused uproar. Ten paces away the engine, with its regular, snorting breath, continued vomiting streams of water from its metal throat.

'Look at the third window on the second floor!' suddenly cried Monsieur Maffre. 'You can see a bed burning quite distinctly on the left hand. It has yellow curtains, and they are blazing like so much paper.'

Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies now returned at a gentle trot to reassure the ladies and gentlemen. It had been a false alarm.

'The sparks,' he said, 'are certainly being carried by the wind towards the Sub-Prefecture, but they are extinguished in the air before they reach it. There is no further danger. They have got the fire well in hand now.'

'But is it known how the fire originated?' asked Madame de Condamin.

Monsieur de Bourdeu asserted that he had first of all seen a dense smoke issuing from the kitchen. Monsieur Maffre alleged, on the other hand, that the flames had first appeared in a room on the first floor. But the sub-prefect shook his head with an air of official prudence, and said in a low voice:

'I am much afraid that malice has had something to do with the disaster. I have ordered an inquiry to be made.'

Then he went on to tell them that he had seen a man lighting the fire with a vine-branch.

'Yes, I saw him too,' interrupted Aurélie Rastoil. 'It was Monsieur Mouret.'

This statement created the greatest astonishment. The thing seemed impossible. Monsieur Mouret escaping and burning down his house—what a frightful story! They overwhelmed Aurélie with questions. She blushed, and her mother looked at her severely. It was scarcely proper for a young girl to be constantly looking out of her window at night-time.

'I assure you that I distinctly recognised Monsieur Mouret,' she continued. 'I had not gone to sleep, and I got up when I saw a bright light. Monsieur Mouret was dancing about in the midst of the fire.'

Then the sub-prefect spoke out:

'Mademoiselle is quite correct. I recognise the unhappy man now. He looked so terrible that I was in doubt as to who it might be, although his face seemed familiar. Excuse me; this is a very serious matter, and I must go and give some orders.'

He went away again, while the company began to discuss this terrible affair of a landlord burning his lodgers to death. Monsieur de Bourdeu inveighed hotly against lunatic asylums. The surveillance exercised in them, he said, was most imperfect. The truth was that Monsieur de Bourdeu was greatly afraid lest the prefecture which Abbé Faujas had promised him should be burnt away in the fire before his eyes.

'Maniacs are extremely revengeful,' said Monsieur de Condamin, in all simplicity.

This remark seemed to embarrass everyone, and the conversation dropped. The ladies shuddered slightly, while the men exchanged peculiar glances. The burning house had become an object of still greater interest now that they knew whose hand had set it on fire. They blinked with a thrill of delicious terror as they gazed upon the glowing pile, and thought of the drama that had been enacted there.

'If old Mouret is in there, that makes five,' said Monsieur de Condamin. Then the ladies hushed him and told him that he was a cold-blooded, unfeeling man.

The Paloques, meanwhile, had been watching the fire since its commencement from the window of their dining-room. They were just above the drawing-room that had been improvised upon the pathway. The judge's wife at last went out, and graciously offered shelter and hospitality to the Rastoil ladies and the friends surrounding them.

'We can see very well from our windows, I assure you,' she said.

And, as the ladies declined her invitation, she added:

'You will certainly take cold; it is a very sharp night.'

But Madame de Condamin smiled and stretched out her little feet, which showed from beneath her skirts.

'Oh dear no! we're not at all cold,' she said. 'My feet are quite toasted. I am very comfortable indeed. Are you cold, mademoiselle?'

'I am really too warm,' Aurélie replied. 'One could imagine that it was a summer night. This fire keeps one quite warm and cosy.'

Everyone declared that it was very pleasant, and so Madame Paloque determined to remain there with them and to take a seat in one of the easy-chairs. Monsieur Maffre had just gone off. He had caught sight, in the midst of the crowd, of his two sons, accompanied by Guillaume Porquier, who had all three run up from a house near the ramparts to see the fire. The magistrate, who was certain that he had locked his lads up in their bedroom, dragged Alphonse and Ambroise away by the ears.

'I think we might go off to bed now,' said Monsieur de Bourdeu, who was gradually growing more cross-grained.

However, Monsieur Péqueur des Saulaies had reappeared again, and showed himself quite indefatigable, though he never neglected the ladies, in spite of the duties and anxieties of all kinds with which he was overwhelmed. He sprang hastily forward to meet Monsieur Delangre, who was just coming back from the Impasse des Chevillottes. They talked together in low tones. The mayor had apparently witnessed some terrible sight, for he kept passing his hand over his face, as though trying to drive away some awful vision that was pursuing him. The ladies could only hear him murmuring, 'We arrived too late! It was horrible!' He would not answer any questions.

'Only Bourdeu and Delangre will regret Abbé Faujas,' Monsieur de Condamin whispered in Madame Paloque's ear.

'They had business on hand with him,' the latter replied quietly. 'Ah! here is Abbé Bourrette. He is weeping from genuine sorrow.'

Abbé Bourrette, who had formed part of the chain of men who passed the buckets on, was sobbing bitterly. The poor man refused all consolation. He would not sit down, but remained standing, with anxious, troubled eyes, watching the last beams burn away. Abbé Surin had also been seen; but he had disappeared after picking up in the crowd all the information he could.

'Come along; let us be off to bed,' exclaimed Monsieur de Bourdeu. 'It is foolish of us to stop here.'

The whole party rose. It was settled that Monsieur Rastoil and his wife and daughter should spend the night at the Paloques'. Madame de Condamin gently tapped her dress, which had got slightly creased, in order to straighten it. The easy-chairs were pushed out of the way, and the company lingered yet a few more moments while bidding each other good-night. The engine was still snorting, and the fire was dying down amidst dense black smoke. Nothing was to be heard but the tramping of the diminishing crowd and the last blows of a fireman's axe striking down a beam.

'It is all over!' thought Macquart, who still kept his position on the opposite pathway.

He remained there a few moments longer, listening to the last words which Monsieur de Condamin exchanged in low tones with Madame Paloque.

'Bah!' said the judge's wife, 'no one will cry for him, unless it's that big gander Bourrette. He had grown quite unendurable, and we were nothing but his slaves. His lordship the Bishop, I dare say, has got a smiling face just now. Plassans is at last delivered!'

'And the Rougons!' exclaimed Monsieur de Condamin. 'They must be quite delighted.'

'I should think so, indeed. The Rougons must be up in the heavens. They will inherit the Abbé's conquest. Ah! they would have paid anyone well who would have run the risk of setting the house on fire.'

Macquart went away feeling extremely dissatisfied. He was beginning to fear that he had been duped. The joy of the Rougons filled him with consternation. The Rougons were crafty folks who always played a double game, and whose opponents were quite certain to end by getting the worst of the struggle. As Macquart crossed the Place of the Sub-Prefecture he swore to himself that he would never set to work in this blind way again.

As he went up to the room where Marthe lay dying he found Rose sitting on one of the stairs. She was in a fuming rage.

'No, indeed, I will certainly not stop in the room!' she cried. 'I won't look on and see such things. Let her die without me; let her die like a dog! I no longer have any love for her; I have no love for anyone. To send for the poor little fellow to kill him! And I consented to go for him! I shall hate myself for it all my life! He was as white as his nightshirt, the angel! I was obliged to carry him here from the Seminary. I thought he was going to give up the ghost on the way, he cried so. Oh! it's a cruel shame! And there he has gone into the room now to kiss her! It quite makes my flesh creep. I wish the whole house would topple down on our heads and finish us all off at one stroke! I will shut myself up in some hole somewhere, and live quite alone, and never see anyone again—never, never! One's whole life seems made up of things that make one weep and make one angry!'

Macquart entered the room. Madame Rougon was on her knees, burying her face in her hands, and Serge, with tears streaming down his cheeks, was standing by the bedside supporting the head of the dying woman. She had not yet regained consciousness. The last flickering flames of the conflagration cast a ruddy reflection upon the ceiling of the room.

At last a convulsive tremor shook Marthe's body. She opened her eyes with an expression of surprise, and sat up in bed to glance around her. Then she clasped her hands together with a look of unutterable terror, and died even as she caught sight of Serge's cassock in the crimson glow.

THE END.

NOTES