As long as the fire raged, the jets of water hissed upon the flames, the alarm-bell tolled unceasingly, firemen brought planks and poles from the villa to construct some kind of a bridge over the fosse, and the noise and confusion increased from moment to moment. In the midst of it all, a piercing shriek was heard at some distance; on the path leading to the upper weir Franz the miller had been found; a heavy stone had prostrated him and crushed in his chest; the man was dead.
This shriek, uttered by his wife as she threw herself upon the body, seemed re-echoed from all parts of the park it was so resounded with cries from hundreds of throats.
"Moritz,—they have found him!" the Frau President murmured, with a start. She had sunk down upon a garden-seat not far from the house,—her feet refused to carry her farther. She now made an effort to rise; in vain! The infirmity of age, hitherto so resolutely ignored, asserted itself at this moment of nervous agitation. "Have they found him? Is he dead? Dead?" she stammered, incoherently, her eyes, usually so coldly calm, staring wildly in the direction of the ruin, whilst she clutched the arm of Flora, who was standing beside her.
The beautiful woman alone preserved her composure. There above the trees the thick vapour rolled lazily and heavily upwards, painting the heavens far and near in dull ashen gray, and here before the house, with its shattered window-panes, the orange-trees were overturned upon the lawn, where the water trickled and flowed in little rills, to gather in pools in the deep furrows cut by the fire-engines. The air was filled with wild outcries, crowds of people were rushing past each moment from the town, and in the midst of this desolation stood a lovely woman, clad in white, with marguerites on her breast and in her fair curls, pale to the lips, but collected and self-assured in her demeanor,—a being set apart from all personal misfortune.
"If you would only loosen your hold of my arm, grandmamma," she said, impatiently, "I might possibly convince you that you are needlessly alarmed. Why must Moritz have perished? Pshaw! Moritz, with his constant good fortune! I am perfectly sure that he is there in the midst of the crowd, safe and sound, and those stupid servants, who, by the way, pay us no attention, except to shout out some unintelligible nonsense in passing, are so frightened that they do not know their own master when they see him." She looked down at the wet sod, and then at her white boot that peeped forth from beneath the flounces of her muslin dress. "One would say I too had lost my senses," she continued, with a shrug, "but I must go and see——"
"No, no, you must stay here!" cried the Frau President, grasping the skirt of white muslin. "You will not leave me alone with Henriette, who is still more helpless than I, and is of no use to me? Oh, God, I shall die! If he should be dead, if—what then?" Her head sank upon her breast, that gleamed with diamonds; she looked old and infirm, and her form seemed bent and shrunken in the stiff folds of her yellow moiré dress.
Henriette crouched upon the seat beside her, ashy pale, with wide, terrified eyes. "Kitty! Where can Kitty be?" she repeated to herself with trembling lips, as if it were a sentence she were learning by rote.
"God in heaven grant me patience!" Flora muttered between her teeth. "Such weakness is terrible. Why in the world, Henriette, are you continually asking for Kitty? No one means to take her from you!"
She looked impatiently towards the house, but no one was to be seen who could relieve her of her charge; every one had gone to the ruins,—the newly-arrived guests, the footmen, the servants from the kitchen; even the neatly-shod ladies' maids had run through the wet towards the scene of the disaster. But aid approached from town in the persons of the amateur performers, who came breathlessly round the corner of the house.
"For heaven's sake, tell us what is the matter!" cried Fräulein von Giese, rushing up to the lonely group of women.