'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.