he remained there, erect, with open mouth and distended eyes,
watching the window.

I had seated myself on the wooden handrail, and my ears were ringing with
the roar of the flood. I do not know how long it was that Babet and I were
in this painful state of stupor, when a voice called to me. It was Jacques
who was holding on to the wall beneath the window. I stretched out my hand
to him, and he clambered up.

Babet clasped him in her arms. She could sob now; and she relieved
herself.

No reference was made to Marguerite. Jacques did not dare say he had been
unable to find her, and we did not dare question him anent his search.

He took me apart and brought me back to the window.

"Father," he said to me in an undertone, "there are more than seven feet
of water in the courtyard, and the river is still rising. We cannot remain
here any longer."

Jacques was right. The house was falling to pieces, the planks of the
outbuildings were going away one by one. Then this death of Marguerite
weighed upon us. Babet, bewildered, was beseeching us. Marie alone
remained peaceful in the big bed? with her doll between her arms, and
slumbering with the happy smile of an angel.

The peril increased at every minute. The water was on the point of
reaching the handrail of the window and pouring into the room. Any one
would have said that it was an engine of war making the farmhouse totter
with regular, dull, hard blows. The current must be running right against
the facade, and we could not hope for any human assistance.

"Every minute is precious," said Jacques in agony. "We shall be crushed
beneath the ruins. Let us look for boards, let us make a raft."

He said that in his excitement. I would naturally have preferred a
thousand times to be in the middle of the river, on a few beams lashed
together, than beneath the roof of this house which was about to fall in.
But where could we lay hands on the beams we required? In a rage I tore
the planks from the cupboards, Jacques broke the furniture, we took away
the shutters, every piece of wood we could reach. And feeling it was
impossible to utilise these fragments, we cast them into the middle of the
room in a fury, and continued searching.

Our last hope was departing, we understood our misery and want of power.
The water was rising; the harsh voice of the Durance was calling to us in
anger. Then, I burst out sobbing, I took Babet in my trembling arms, I
begged Jacques to come near