As far as the eye could reach in the north and the east, one saw only an immense sheet of yellow, muddy water, cut at the horizon by a sky overcast with dark clouds rapidly hurried along by a freezing wind. At the west the forest of Pont Brillant was half submerged, while the tops of a few poplars on the plain could be discerned here and there in the middle of a motionless and limitless sea.
This devastation, slow and silent as the tomb, was even more terrible than the brilliant ravages of a conflagration.
For a moment the spectators of this awful disaster stood still in mute astonishment.
David, the first to recover from this unavailing grief, said to Madame Bastien:
"Madame, I will return in a moment."
Some minutes after he ran back, bringing an excellent field-glass that had served him in many a voyage.
"The fog on the water prevents my distinguishing objects at a great distance, madame," said David to Marie. "In what direction is the farmhouse you spoke of just now?"
"In the direction of those poplars down there on the left, M. David."
The preceptor directed his field-glass toward the point designated, carefully observing the scene for some minutes, then he cried:
"Ah! the unfortunate creatures!"