evening, when I was coming out of
the Balbo Theatre late at night. On entering the Via Roma, I saw an
unusual light, and a crowd of people collecting. A house was on fire.
Tongues of flame and clouds of smoke were bursting from the windows and
the roof; men and women appeared at the windows and then disappeared,
uttering shrieks of despair. There was a dense throng in front of the
door: the crowd was shouting: 'They will be burned alive! Help! The
firemen!' At that moment a carriage arrived, four firemen sprang out of
it--the first who had reached the town-hall--and rushed into the house.
They had hardly gone in when a horrible thing happened: a woman ran to a
window of the third story, with a yell, clutched the balcony, climbed
down it, and remained suspended, thus clinging, almost suspended in
space, with her back outwards, bending beneath the flames, which flashed
out from the room and almost licked her head. The crowd uttered a cry of
horror. The firemen, who had been stopped on the second floor by mistake
by the terrified lodgers, had already broken through a wall and
precipitated themselves into a room, when a hundred shouts gave them
warning:--

"'On the third floor! On the third floor!'

"They flew to the third floor. There there was an infernal
uproar,--beams from the roof crashing in, corridors filled with a
suffocating smoke. In order to reach the rooms where the lodgers were
imprisoned, there was no other way left but to pass over the roof. They
instantly sprang upon it, and a moment later something which resembled a
black phantom appeared on the tiles, in the midst of the smoke. It was
the corporal, who had been the first to arrive. But in order to get
from the roof to the small set of rooms cut off by the fire, he was
forced to pass over an extremely narrow space comprised between a dormer
window and the eavestrough: all the rest was in flames, and that tiny
space was covered with snow and ice, and there was no place to hold on
to.

"'It is impossible for him to pass!' shouted the crowd below.

"The corporal advanced along the edge of the roof. All shuddered, and
began to observe him with bated breath. He passed. A tremendous hurrah
rose towards heaven. The corporal resumed his way, and on arriving at
the point which was threatened, he began to break away, with furious
blows of his axe, beams, tiles, and rafters, in order to open a hole
through which he might descend within.

"In the meanwhile, the w