Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/305

 "They fire the Berceau," he screamed. "Quick! quick! or you will be burned alive!"

Reine Allix looked up with a smile: "Be quiet! Do you not see? He sleeps."

The old man shook her, implored her, strove to drag her away—in desperation pointed to the roof above, which was already in flames.

Reine Allix looked: at that sight her mind cleared and regained consciousness; she remembered all, she understood all: she knew that he was dead.

"Go in peace and save yourself," she said in the old, sweet, strong tones of an earlier day. "As for me, I am very old. I and my dead will stay together at home."

The man fled, and left her to her choice.

The great curled flames and the livid vapours closed around her: she never moved. The death was fierce but swift, and even in death she and the one whom she had loved and reared were not divided.

The end soon came.

From hill to hill the Berceau de Dieu broke into flames. The village was a lake of fire, into which the statue of the Christ, burning and reeling, fell. Some few peasants, with their wives and children, fled to the woods, and there escaped one torture to perish