He dragged himself to the door.
There was now no peasant's house. Only a scene of blackened ruins met his eye.
The barn, too, was scorched; but perhaps the wind had blown in an opposite direction, for it had not burned.
Franz trembled like a poplar leaf when he thought of what might have been his fate.
"Thank God, thank God!" he murmured, and then, before he could reach out his hand for support, he fell on the floor in a dead faint, and there he lay while they were making peace at Tilsit.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FOES MEET
Marianne, a few days later, went one morning to the drawing-room of Countess von Voss.
The room was full of ladies. Dr. Hufeland was there, the Englishman, and the Queen herself, busy with her lint.