e oars, for they had
now passed the bridge of Solferino and were come out into a wide open
space of water. The light was so intense that the river was illuminated
as by the noonday sun when it stands vertically above men's heads and
casts no shadow. The most minute objects, such as the eddies in the
stream, the stones piled on the banks, the small trees along the
_quais_, stood out before their vision with wonderful distinctness. The
bridges, too, were particularly noticeable in their dazzling whiteness,
and so clearly defined that they could have counted every stone; they
had the appearance of narrow gangways thrown across the fiery stream to
connect one conflagration with the other. Amid the roar of the flames
and the general clamor a loud crash occasionally announced the fall of
some stately edifice. Dense clouds of soot hung in the air and settled
everywhere, the wind brought odors of pestilence on its wings. And
another horror was that Paris, those more distant quarters of the city
that lay back from the banks of the Seine, had ceased to exist for
them. To right and left of the conflagration that raged with such fierce
resplendency was an unfathomable gulf of blackness; all that presented
itself to their strained gaze was a vast waste of shadow, an empty void,
as if the devouring element had reached the utmost limits of the city
and all Paris were swallowed up in everlasting night. And the heavens,
too, were dead and lifeless; the flames rose so high that they
extinguished the stars.

Maurice, who was becoming delirious, laughed wildly.

"High carnival at the Consoil d'Etat and at the Tuileries to-night! They
have illuminated the facades, women are dancing beneath the sparkling
chandeliers. Ah, dance, dance and be merry, in your smoking petticoats,
with your chignons ablaze--"

And he drew a picture of the feasts of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
music, the lights, the flowers, the unmentionable orgies of lust and
drunkenness, until the candles on the walls blushed at the shamelessness
of the display and fired the palaces that sheltered such depravity.
Suddenly there was a terrific explosion. The fire, approaching from
either extremity of the Tuileries, had reached the Salle des Marechaux,
the casks of powder caught, the Pavilion de l'Horloge was blown into the
air with the violence of a powder mill. A column of flame mounted high
in the heavens, and spreading, expanded in a great fiery plume on the
inky blackness of t