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364 The howls of human beings being burnt alive! Neronian pyrotechnics!

While Laurent was thinking that he had already heard these voices, a few lumps and a hail of shot tumbled down about him, and he had a hurried vision of a trunk to which a bit of chest was still hanging, of a child's foot still lodged in its little boot, of a muscular leg breeched in velveteen, and he remembered the curve of that body, the rumple of the breeches, the sprightly noise of the boots running about their work, and the handsome impudence of a bright face beneath a saucy cap.

"It's I, Frans Verwinkel, who explode the fulminate! You should see me at work! I have only to hit it thus, and the thing is over!"

Perhaps the poor thing had only hit it thus …

No, it was impossible! Laurent could not believe his senses. The mirage had come on again, stronger than before. To convince himself of his own state of hallucination, he laughed out loud, but he heard himself laugh, and the nightmare persisted.

Toward the extremity of the urban belt, where less than a second ago there had been a block of houses of the village of Austruweel, not one of the twenty hovels remained with the exception of the tap-room In den Spanjaard, contemporaneous with the Spanish domination, and flourishing in the year 1560. Through the raging gap one could see the country, the grass-covered slopes of the fortifications, the curtain of budding trees, and the placid church-steeple of Austruweel, above which the lark was singing its first song. The sentry box of a sentinel was lying at the bottom of a rampart.

Capricious as lightning, the explosion had preserved