“After that,” I said, “it will not be to-day, and the wicked sprites who are watching me will have missed their chance.”
They agreed to humor my fancy, and Arthur Meyer, who ought to have gone to some first night at one of the theaters, gave it up. Dinner was more animated than luncheon had been, and it was nine o’clock when we left the table. Rose Baretta sang us some delightful old songs. I went away for a minute to see that all was right in my grandmother’s room. I found my maid with her head wrapped up in cloths soaked in sedative water. I asked what was the matter, and she said that she had a terrible headache. I told her to prepare my bath and everything for me for the night and then to go to bed. She thanked me and obeyed.
I went back to the drawing-room, and sitting down to the piano, played “Il Bacio,” Mendelssohn’s “Bells,” and Weber’s “Last Thought.” I had not come to the end of this last melody, when I stopped, suddenly hearing cries in the street of “Fire! Fire!”
“They are shouting ‘Fire!’” exclaimed Arthur Meyer.
“That’s all the same to me,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “It is not midnight yet and I am expecting my own misfortune.”
Charles Haas had opened the drawing-room window to see where the shouts were coming from. He stepped out on the balcony, and then came quickly in again.
“The fire is here!” he exclaimed. “Look!”
I rushed to the window and saw the flames coming from the two windows of my bedroom. I ran back through the drawing-room to the corridor and then to the room where my child was sleeping with his governess and his nurse. They were all fast asleep. Arthur Meyer opened the hall door, the bell of which was being rung violently. I roused the two women quickly, wrapped the sleeping child in his blankets, and rushed to the door with my precious burden. I then ran downstairs and, crossing the street, took him to Guadacelli’s chocolate shop opposite, just at the corner of the Rue de Caumartin. The kind man took my little slumberer in, let him lie on a couch, where the child continued his sleep without any break. I left him in charge of his governess and his nurse, and went quickly back to the flaming house.
The firemen, who had been sent for, had not yet arrived, and at all costs I was determined to rescue my poor grandmother. It was impossible to go back up the principal staircase, as it was filled with smoke. Charles Haas, bareheaded and in evening dress, a flower still in his buttonhole, started with me up the narrow back staircase. We were soon on the first floor, but when once there my knees shook, it seemed as though my heart had stopped, and I was seized with despair. The kitchen door, at the top of the first flight of stairs, was locked with a triple turn of the key. My willing companion was tall, slight, and elegant, but not strong. I besought him to go down and fetch a hammer, a hatchet, or something, but just at that moment a newcomer wrenched the door open by a violent plunge with his shoulder against it.
This new arrival was no other than M. Sohège, a friend of mine. He was a most charming and excellent man, a broad-shouldered Alsatian, well known in Paris, very lively and kind, and always ready to do anyone a service. I took my friends to my grandmother’s room. She was sitting up in bed, out of breath with calling Catherine, the servant who waited upon her. This maid was about twenty-five years of age, a big, strapping girl from Burgundy, and she was now sleeping peacefully, in spite of the uproar in the street, the noise of the fire engines, which had arrived at last, and the wild shrieks of the occupants of the house. Sohège shook the maid, while I explained to my grandmother the reason of the tumult and why we were in her room.