"Fire! Fire! I am crying fire! Are they all deaf, that no one comes? They arc burning up my children! Come, you men over yonder! To think of the days and days I have walked, and to find them like this! Fire! Help! They are angels, nothing short of angels! What have those innocents done? They shot me, and now they are burning them! Who does such things as these? Help! Save my children! Don't you hear me? If I were a dog, you would have pity on me! My children! They are asleep! Ah, Georgette, I see her dear little body! René-Jean! Gros-Alain! Those are their names. You can see well enough that I am their mother. Such abominable doings go on in these days! I have walked for days and nights. Why, I talked about them this very morning to a woman. Help! Help! Fire! They must be monsters! This is horrible! The oldest one is not five years old and the baby not two. I can see their little naked legs. They are asleep. Holy Virgin! Heaven gives them to me and Hell snatches them back again. Just think how far I have walked! The children that I fed with my milk,--I who felt so wretched because I couldn't find them! Have pity on me! I want my children; I must have them! And to think of them there in the fire! See my poor bleeding feet. Help! It cannot be that there are men on earth who would let those poor little creatures die like that! Help! Murder! Who ever saw the like? Ah, the brigands! What is that dreadful house? They stole them from me to murder them. Merciful Jesus! I want my children. Oh, I don't know what to do! They must not die! Help! Help! Help! Oh, I shall curse Heaven if they die like that!" Simultaneously with the mother's entreaty other voices rang out on the plateau and the ravine. "A ladder!" "There is none." "Water!" "None to be had!" "Up in the tower there, in the second story, there is a door." "It is iron." "Break it in!" "Impossible." Here the mother redoubled her desperate appeals. "Fire! Help! Make haste, or kill me at once! My children! My children! Oh, that terrible fire! Throw me into the fire, but save their lives!" In the intervals between her cries could be heard the constant crackling of the flames. The Marquis felt in his pocket and his hand met the key to the iron door. Then stooping below the arch, through which he had just escaped, he re-entered the passage from which he had so lately emerged. II. FROM THE DOOR OF STONE TO THAT OF IRON. [Illustration 128] A whole army driven half wild by its enforced inaction in the presence of danger; four thousand men unable to save three children,--such was the situation. In point of fact, they had no ladder; the one sent from Javené had not arrived; the flames spread as from a yawning crater; it was simply absurd to attempt to extinguish them with the water from the half-dried brook in the ravine; one might as well empty a glass of water into a volcano.