s
like Bedlam; at every one of the many windows appeared people
shrieking, praying, crying. And glancing into one of those windows,
where an old woman was screaming frantically, I saw a strange, a
mysterious sight: upon a wretched bed lay a sick man--lay Gaston
Cheverny!

I had not been brought up in the streets of Paris and forced to
soldier it since my fourteenth year without becoming tolerably free
from superstition. This sudden glimpse of Gaston Cheverny lying ill in
a miserable garret in Prague, when I supposed him on the personal
staff of Marshal Maillebois, did not prevent me from taking all
possible measures to save that quarter of the town from burning, and
striving to allay the panic. Both I found almost impossible. The old
house blazed like tinder, the flames reddening the moonlit sky. I gave
orders to blow up the houses on each side, in order to save the town.
The horrible explosions, the smoke and smell of powder, the shrieking,
terrified people, the soldiers battling with mob and fire--the mob
believing the soldiers to have started the fire--were hideous. I have
been in many a worse place than the market-place of Prague on that
bleak November night, but never one which had a greater outward aspect
of horror.

Toward daylight, ashes and ruins replaced the fire, trembling terror
and pale exhaustion, the frantic alarm of the people, and the quarter
was saved. Through it all, I had Gaston Cheverny in my mind. I could
not understand how he, an officer in Marshal Maillebois's army, could
be in Prague at all, but I had seen him in the glare of the blazing
building as plainly as if the sun had been at the noon mark.

In the gray of the dawn, I began to investigate concerning Gaston, but
he could not be found. I thought it not strange that in so much
danger, terror and confusion he had disappeared for a time, but I
confidently reckoned on his being found within a few days. Next day, I
put the official inquiry on foot, but there was no record of any such
person having been in Prague. It was difficult to account, under any
circumstances, for Gaston's being there. Yet, had not these eyes seen
him? It was one more mystery and misery about this man, once the
frankest, freest, most open-hearted of men. It did not lessen those
vague and terrible fears which had haunted me about Francezka.

The next few days were busy enough, and I scarce rested by night or
day. A week passed, and, hearing nothing of Gaston Cheverny,