colonnaded
stories. The four structures surrounding the great central court had all
caught at the same moment, and the petroleum, which here also had been
distributed by the barrelful, had poured down the four grand staircases
at the four corners of the building in rivers of hellfire. On the
facade that faced the river the black line of the mansard was profiled
distinctly against the ruddy sky, amid the red tongues that rose to lick
its base, while colonnades, entablatures, friezes, carvings, all stood
out with startling vividness in the blinding, shimmering glow. So great
was the energy of the fire, so terrible its propulsive force, that
the colossal structure was in some sort raised bodily from the earth,
trembling and rumbling on its foundations, preserving intact only its
four massive walls, in the fierce eruption that hurled its heavy zinc
roof high in air. Then, close at one side were the d'Orsay barracks,
which burned with a flame that seemed to pierce the heavens, so purely
white and so unwavering that it was like a tower of light. And finally,
back from the river, were still other fires, the seven houses in the Rue
du Bac, the twenty-two houses in the Rue de Lille, helping to tinge
the sky a deeper crimson, profiling their flames on other flames, in a
blood-red ocean that seemed to have no end.

Jean murmured in awed tone:

"Did ever mortal man look on the like of this! the very river is on
fire."

Their boat seemed to be sailing on the bosom of an incandescent stream.
As the dancing lights of the mighty conflagrations were caught by the
ripples of the current the Seine seemed to be pouring down torrents of
living coals; flashes of intensest crimson played fitfully across its
surface, the blazing brands fell in showers into the water and were
extinguished with a hiss. And ever they floated downward with the tide
on the bosom of that blood-red stream, between the blazing palaces on
either hand, like wayfarers in some accursed city, doomed to destruction
and burning on the banks of a river of molten lava.

"Ah!" exclaimed Maurice, with a fresh access of madness at the sight of
the havoc he had longed for, "let it burn, let it all go up in smoke!"

But Jean silenced him with a terrified gesture, as if he feared such
blasphemy might bring them evil. Where could a young man whom he loved
so fondly, so delicately nurtured, so well informed, have picked up such
ideas? And he applied himself more vigorously to th