“There is no use in your keeping on, Colas; you might as well go back where you came from. The whole thing is burned, flat as the palm of your hand; it will only make you sick to see it.” Every word seemed to wring my heartstrings, but I tried to put a good face on it, and said:
“I know, I know, but I must go on all the same.”
“What for, if the whole place is in ruins?”
“I want to pick up the pieces.”
“There aren’t any pieces,” said he, “not so much as you could put on the end of your finger.”
“Jojot,” said I, “there is no use your trying to persuade me that there is absolutely nothing left! My apprentices and the neighbors would not stand by, and see all I have in the world burnt to ashes, without trying to save a few sticks of furniture for me!”
“You don’t know anything about it,” cried he. “Why, your neighbors are the very ones who set your house on fire!”
I was perfectly crushed at this news, and he, with the sort of perverse satisfaction one has in making out anything as bad as possible, went on to tell me the whole story from the beginning.
“You must know,” said he, “that the plague is at the bottom of the trouble; our town Councilors, the Provost, and the whole crew of them, fled away, and left us as sheep without a shepherd, and the people at this lost their heads completely, so that when a fresh case of the disease broke out in Beuvron, some one raised a cry to burn down the infected houses. No sooner said than done, and naturally they began with yours, Colas, because you were not on hand to stop them. The more they burned, the better they seemed to like it; you know how a mob is when it once gets going, men seem to be drunk with love of destruction, so they went on from bad to worse, as if they were crazy; throwing everything they could lay hands on into the flames, and dancing round them like savages.
‘On the bridge of Clamecy town,