III. WHERE THE SLEEPING CHILDREN WAKE. Meanwhile, the little ones had at last opened their eyes. The fire, although it had not yet reached the library, cast a red reflection on the ceiling. It was not the kind of dawn the children knew. They were gazing at it,--Georgette utterly absorbed. The conflagration showed forth all its glories; the black hydra and the scarlet dragon appeared amid the smoke-wreaths in all their sombre and vermilion hues. Great sparks shot out into the distance, lighting up the gloom like contending comets pursuing one another. Fire is a prodigal; its furnaces abound in jewels which they scatter to the winds; and it is to some purpose that charcoal is identical with the diamond. From the fissures opened in the wall of the third story, the embers were showering down into the ravine like cascades of jewels; the heaps of straw and oats burning in the granary began to pour in a stream through the windows like avalanches of gold-dust,--the oats changing to amethysts, and the straw to carbuncles. "Pretty!" cried Georgette. All three were now sitting up. "Ah!" cried the mother, "they are awake!" When René-Jean rose, then Gros-Alain rose also, and Georgette followed. René-Jean stretched himself, and going towards the window, exclaimed, "I am hot!" "Me hot!" repeated Georgette. The mother called them. "Children! René! Alain! Georgette!" The children looked round. They were trying to find out what it all meant. Where men feel terrified, children are simply curious; he who is open to surprise is not easily alarmed; ignorance is closely allied to intrepidity. Children have so little claim upon hell, that were they to behold it, it would but excite their admiration. The mother kept repeating,-- "René! Alain! Georgette!" René-Jean turned; that voice roused him from his reverie. Children have short memories, but their recollections are swift; the entire past is for them but as yesterday. When René-Jean saw his mother, it seemed to him the most natural thing that could happen, surrounded as he was by strange things; and with a dim consciousness of needing support, he called, "Mamma!" "Mamma!" said Gros-Alain. "M'ma!" repeated Georgette. And she stretched out her little arms. The mother shrieked, "My children!" The three children came to the window-ledge; fortunately, the conflagration was not on this side. "I am too warm," said René-Jean; then added, "it burns"! and he looked for his mother. "Why don't you come, mamma?" he said. "Tum, m'ma," repeated Georgette.