“First, let’s take a little walk, or I shall fly into the air,” thought he. “And I must keep in the middle of the road. If I go too near the passers-by, they will notice that I’m a head and shoulders taller than any of them. Another superiority to conceal. One has never done putting the finishing touches to one’s education.”
“Place Malesherbes ... this afternoon!” he said to himself, as he copied out Count Juste-Agénor’s address from the directory. “But what’s to prevent me from going this morning to prospect Rue de Verneuil?” (This was the address on Julius’s card.)
Lafcadio knew and loved this part of Paris; leaving the more frequented thoroughfares, he took a roundabout way by Rue Vaneau; in that quiet street the young freshness of his joy would have space to breathe more freely. As he turned into the Rue de Babylone he saw people running; near the Impasse Oudinot a crowd was collecting in front of a two-storied house from which was pouring an evil-looking smoke. He forced himself not to hurry his pace, though he was naturally a quick walker....
Lafcadio, my friend, here you require the pen of a newspaper reporter—mine abandons you! My readers must not expect me to relate the incoherent comments of the onlookers, the broken exclamations, the....
Wriggling through the crowd like an eel, Lafcadio made his way to the front. There a poor woman was sobbing on her knees.
“My children! My little children!” she wept. She was being supported by a young girl, whose simple elegance of dress showed she was no relation; she was very pale and so lovely that Lafcadio was instantly drawn to her. She answered his questions.
“No, I don’t know her. I have just made out that her two little children are in that room on the second floor which the flames are just going to reach—they have caught the staircase already; the fire brigade has been sent for, but by the time they come the children will have been smothered by the smoke. Oh! wouldn’t it be possible to get up to the balcony by climbing that wall—look!—and helping oneself up by that waterpipe? Some of these people say that thieves did it a little while ago—thieves did it to steal money, but no one dares do it to save two children. I’ve offered my purse, but it’s no good. Oh! if only I were a man!”
Lafcadio listened no longer. Dropping his stick and hat at the young lady’s feet, he darted forward. With a bound he caught hold of the top of the wall unaided; a pull of his arms raised him on to it; in a moment he was standing upright and walking along the narrow edge, regardless of the broken pieces of glass with which it bristled.
But the amazement of the crowd redoubled when, seizing hold of the vertical pipe, he swarmed up it, hardly resting his feet here and there for a second on the clamps which fixed it to the wall. There he is—at the balcony now—now he has vaulted the railings; the admiring crowd no longer trembles—it can only admire, for, indeed, he moves with consummate ease. One push of his shoulder shivers the window-pane; he has disappeared into the room. Agonising moment of unspeakable suspense! Here he comes again, holding a crying infant in his arms. Out of a sheet torn in two and knotted together end to end, he hastily contrives a rope—ties the child to it—lowers it gently to the arms of the distracted mother. The second child is saved in the same way.