us. I wished us all to die in the same
embrace.

Jacques had returned to the window. And, suddenly, he exclaimed:

"Father, we are saved!--Come and see."

The sky was clear. The roof of a shed, torn away by the current, had come
to a standstill beneath our window. This roof, which was several yards
broad, was formed of light beams and thatch; it floated, and would make a
capital raft, I joined my hands together and would have worshipped this
wood and straw.

Jacques jumped on the roof, after having firmly secured it. He walked on
the thatch, making sure it was everywhere strong. The thatch resisted;
therefore we could adventure on it without fear.

"Oh! it will carry us all very well," said Jacques joyfully. "See how
little it sinks into the water! The difficulty will be to steer it."

He looked around him and seized two poles drifting along in the current,
as they passed by.

"Ah! here are oars," he continued. "You will go to the stern, father, and
I forward, and we will manoeuvre the raft easily. There are not twelve
feet of water. Quick, quick! get on board, we must not lose a minute."

My poor Babet tried to smile. She wrapped little Marie carefully up in her
shawl; the child had just woke up, and, quite alarmed, maintained a
silence which was broken by deep sobs. I placed a chair before the window
and made Babet get on the raft. As I held her in my arms I kissed her with
poignant emotion, feeling this kiss was the last.

The water was beginning to pour into the room. Our feet were soaking. I
was the last to embark; then I undid the cord. The current hurled us
against the wall; it required precautions and many efforts to quit the
farmhouse.

The fog had little by little dispersed. It was about midnight when we
left. The stars were still buried in mist; the moon which was almost at
the edge of the horizon, lit up the night with a sort of wan daylight.

The inundation then appeared to us in all its grandiose horror. The valley
had become a river. The Durance, swollen to enormous proportions and
washing the two hillsides, passed between dark masses of cultivated land,
and was the sole thing displaying life in the inanimate space bounded by
the horizon. It thundered with a sovereign voice, maintaining in its anger
the majesty of its colossal wave. Clumps of trees emerged in places,
staining the sheet of pale water with black streaks. Opposite us I
recognised the tops of the oaks along the walk; the current c