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1The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as
2though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain
3ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through
4the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where
5the last Marquis had slept. East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures
6crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. Four lights
7broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again. But, not for long. Presently, the
8chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous. Then, a
9flickering streak played behind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where
10balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the
11great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire. A faint murmur arose about the
12house from the few people who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was spurring
13and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam
14stood at Monsieur Gabelle's door. "Help, Gabelle! Help, every one!" The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that
15were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at
16the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. "It must be forty feet high," said they, grimly; and never
17moved. The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away through the village, and galloped up the
18stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from them, a
19group of soldiers. "Help, gentlemen--officers! The chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by
20timely aid! Help, help!" The officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered,
21with shrugs and biting of lips, "It must burn." As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the
22village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and
23woman by the idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little pane of
24glass. The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur
25Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so
26submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.
27The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind,
28driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of the
29blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the
30two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel
31Marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire. The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the
32fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a
33new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the
34extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame.
35Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped
36into the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads,
37guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the
38tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy. Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire,
39and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes--though it
40was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter days--became impatient for
41an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon,
42Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was,
43that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were
44broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and
45crush a man or two below. Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the distant chateau for fire and
46candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened
47lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in
48his favour. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that
49plunge into it upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles
50of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him
51for that while. Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate,
52that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born
53and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon
54whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures
55were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude
56of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to
57calculate successfully.
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