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.