'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: