Putting his arm aside I drew level with him, and through the general chaos searched out a something to justify his presumption, a something that overshadowed with its terror the common exalted level of disaster. But I missed it; search as I might, I missed it, not knowing what to look for, and turned at last to Martin, who stood watching me. There was a new look on his face that puzzled me, so softened was it. What could there be left in Solignac that made for gentleness? "Well?" "It was a good end, Monsieur Gaspard, the finest end in the world; I could ask no better myself." Out of the blackening ruins of my home a puff of foul vapour blew smarting into my face. "A good end? That! Are you mad?" "Hers," he answered, "Babette's; she died for Solignac." "Babette? Dead? Where--?" I broke off, following the direction of his eyes, but without comprehension. I had forgotten Babette, and remembered her now with a rush of shame. From a triangular patch of gloom where a transverse fallen beam, propped against the wall, buttressed up a mass of wreckage, a sleeve of homespun woollen stuff was thrust. Motes of wood ash and dust of rubble were strewn so thickly over it that I had passed it by as only another wisp of Solignac's torn hangings. Even now it was not until Martin shook these off and Babette's dead hand hung limply down that I understood. "Poor Babette!" I whispered, "Poor faithful Babette!" I spoke to myself rather than to Martin, and yet he heard me above the crackle of the pyre settling inch by inch. "Why would she not be faithful?" he said as roughly as if he grudged her the remorse of my regret; "you make too much of it, Monsieur Gaspard. This is but a little thing to have done, and for what else was she born? We must lift her out somehow; though, but for one thing, I would say leave her where she is." "Leave her here? Leave Babette in this hell of a place?" "Where better, with Solignac for a tomb, and the dust of the house she loved to cover her? But we must have her out." Going down on his knees, he crawled across her into the hollow where the body lay, while I stooped by her, her hand fast in mine as if she were alive and I comforting her. From within came the sound of ripped cloth, and Martin returned, coughing and choking with the dusty smoke. "A joist pinned her," he explained. "Stand aside now, Monsieur Gaspard, and I'll carry her out."