“It may be that I do not resemble them either, mademoiselle,” I ventured mildly. “Who can tell!” she retorted; and turned away from me to gaze at the scene below. The wine had done its work--had converted harmless peasants and cowering wretches into bloodthirsty brutes animated by a kind of frenzy which we for a moment did not understand. Men and women were running about screaming madly, no longer heeding the fire which they had kindled on the lawn, and which was now dying away for lack of fuel. They were pouring in and out of the house with some other end in view--and suddenly we saw what it was. For from one wing of the château came a puff of smoke followed almost instantly by a quick burst of flame. “They have fired the house,” said M. le Comte grimly; and we stood there numbly watching the progress of the flames, as powerless to check them as though we had been a hundred leagues away. They ate their way through the building with a rapidity which showed how artfully they were being fed. Indeed it seemed to me that this whole drama was moving forward to its climax with a regularity which proved its prearrangement. It was not a spontaneous outburst of the people; it was a thing theatric, carefully thought out, in which the actors were really only puppets controlled by wires centring in one powerful hand. And as I recalled Pasdeloup’s story there could be no question in my mind as to whom that hand belonged. I shivered a little as I asked myself what the crisis was toward which the drama was mounting. And I felt strangely impotent, as though it were the very hand of Fate raised against us, and not merely that of a vengeful and lecherous scoundrel! The flames burst out at last at roof and windows, casting a red glow over lawn and garden, where the mob stood staring in half-awed triumph at its handiwork. Madame watched the destruction with white face, but with an admirable control. “Can they fire the tower?” she asked. “No, I think not,” answered her husband. “Fire from without would have no effect upon these solid walls, and they cannot get fire to the inside. The breeze, you see, is carrying those sparks away from us.” “That was my home,” she murmured, “and I loved it.” “We will build another,” said M. le Comte, pressing her to him. “When this cloud that covers France has rolled away we will build another home, which you will love even more, for we shall be very happy there.” “Not happier than we have been here,” she said, with a smile full at the same time of tears and joy. “We have been very happy here, my love. Whatever they do, they cannot take the past away from us. The future belongs to God, but the past is ours.”