whole regiment was at hand, took to their heels. And now they had but a short bit of the Rue d'Argenteuil to traverse and they would be safe in the Rue des Orties.
For four long hours that seemed like an eternity Jean's longing desire had been bent on that Rue des Orties with feverish impatience, and now they were there it appeared like a haven of safety. It was dark, silent, and deserted, as if there were no battle raging within a hundred leagues of it. The house, an old, narrow house without a concierge, was still as the grave.
'I have the keys in my pocket,' murmured Maurice. 'The big one opens the street door, the little one is the key of my room, way at the top of the house.'
He succumbed and fainted dead away in Jean's arms, whose alarm and distress were extreme. They made him forget to close the outer door, and he had to grope his way up that strange, dark staircase, bearing his lifeless burden and observing the greatest caution not to stumble or make any noise that might arouse the sleeping inmates of the rooms. When he had gained the top he had to deposit the wounded man on the floor while he searched for the chamber door by striking matches, of which he fortunately had a supply in his pocket, and only when he had found and opened it did he return and raise him in his arms again. Entering, he laid him on the little iron bed that faced the window, which he threw open to its full extent in his great need of air and light. It was broad day; he dropped on his knees beside the bed, sobbing as if his heart would break, suddenly abandoned by all his strength as the fearful thought again smote him that he had slain his friend.
Minutes passed; he was hardly surprised when, raising his eyes, he saw Henriette standing by the bed. It was perfectly natural: her brother was dying, she had come. He had not even seen her enter the room; for all he knew she might have been standing there for hours. He sank into a chair and watched her with stupid eyes as she hovered about the bed, her heart wrung with mortal anguish at sight of her brother lying there senseless, in his blood-stained garments. Then his memory began to act again; he asked:
'Tell me, did you close the street door?'
She answered with an affirmative motion of the head, and as she came toward him, extending her two hands in her great need of sympathy and support, he added:
'You know it was I who killed him.'
She did not understand; she did not believe him. He felt no flutter in the two little hands that rested confidingly in his own.
'It was I who killed him-yes, 'twas over yonder, behind a barricade, I did it. He was fighting on one side, I on the other-'
There began to be a fluttering of the little hands.
'We were like drunken men, none of us knew what he as about-it was I who killed him.'
Then Henriette, shivering, pale as death, withdrew her hands, fixing on him a gaze that was full of horror. Father of Mercy, was the end of all things come! was her crushed and bleeding heart to know no peace for ever more! Ah, that Jean, of whom she had been thinking that very day, happy in the unshaped hope that perhaps she might see him once again! And it was he who had done that abominable thing; and yet he had saved Maurice, for was it not he who had brought him home through so many perils? She could not yield her hands to him now without a revolt of all her being, but she uttered a cry into which she threw the last hope of her tortured and distracted heart.
'Oh! I will save him; I
She had acquired considerable experience in surgery during the long time she had been in attendance on the hospital at Remilly, and now she proceeded without delay to examine her brother's hurt, who remained unconscious while she was undressing him. But when she undid the rude bandage of Jean's invention, he stirred feebly and uttered a faint cry of pain, opening wide his eyes that were bright with fever. He recognized her at once and smiled.
'You here! Ah, how glad I am to see you once more before I die!'
She silenced him, speaking in a tone of cheerful confidence.
'Hush, don't talk of dying; I won't allow it! I mean that you shall live! There, be quiet, and let me see what is to be done.'
However, when Henriette had examined the injured arm and the wound in the side, her face became clouded and a troubled look rose to her eyes. She installed herself as mistress in the room, searching until she found a little oil, tearing up old shirts for bandages, while Jean descended to the lower regions for a pitcher of water. He did not open his mouth, but looked on in silence as she washed and deftly dressed the wounds, incapable of aiding her, seemingly deprived of all power of action by her presence there. When she had concluded her task, however, noticing her alarmed expression, he proposed to her that he should go and secure a doctor, but she was in possession of all her clear intelligence. No, no; she would not have a chance-met doctor, of whom they knew nothing, who, perhaps, would betray her brother to the authorities. They must have a man they could depend on; they could afford to wait a few hours. Finally, when Jean said he must go and report for duty with his company, it was agreed that he should return as soon as he could get away, and try to bring a surgeon with him.
He delayed his departure, seemingly unable to make up his mind to leave that room, whose atmosphere was pervaded by the evil he had unintentionally done. The window, which had been closed for a moment, had been opened again, and from it the wounded man, lying on his bed, his head propped up by pillows, was looking out over the city, while the others, also, in the oppressive silence that had settled on the chamber, were gazing out into vacancy.
From that elevated point of the Butte des Moulins a good half of Paris lay stretched beneath their eyes in a vast panorama: first the central districts, from the Faubourg Saint-Honore to the Bastille, then the Seine in its entire course through the city, with the thickly-built, densely-populated regions of the left bank, an ocean of roofs, treetops, steeples, domes, and towers. The light was growing stronger, the abominable night, than which there have been few more terrible in history, was ended; but beneath the rosy sky, in the pure, clear light of the rising sun, the fires were blazing still. Before them lay the burning Tuileries, the d'Orsay barracks, the Palaces of the Council of State and the Legion of Honor, the flames from which were paled by the superior refulgence of the day- star. Even beyond the houses in the Rue de Lille and the Rue du Bac there must have been other structures burning, for clouds of smoke were visible rising from the carrefour of la Croix-Rouge, and, more distant still, from the Rue Vavin and the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Nearer at hand and to their right the fires in the Rue Saint- Honore were dying out, while to the left, at the Palais-Royal and the new Louvre, to which the torch had not been applied until near morning, the work of the incendiaries was apparently a failure. But what they were unable to account for at first was the dense volume of black smoke which, impelled by the west wind, came driving past their window. Fire had been set to the Ministry of Finance at three o'clock in the morning and ever since that time it had been smoldering, emitting no blaze, among the stacks and piles of documents that were contained in the low- ceiled, fire-proof vaults and chambers. And if the terrific impressions of the night were not there to preside at the awakening of the great city -the fear of total destruction, the Seine pouring its fiery waves past their doors, Paris kindling into flame from end to end-a feeling of gloom and despair, hung heavy over the quartiers that had been spared, with that dense, on-pouring smoke, whose dusky cloud was ever spreading. Presently the sun, which had risen bright and clear, was hid by it, and the golden sky was filled with the great funeral pall.
Maurice, who appeared to be delirious again, made a slow, sweeping gesture that embraced the entire horizon, murmuring:
'Is it all burning? Ah, how long it takes!'
Tears rose to Henriette's eyes, as if her burden of misery was made heavier for her by the share her brother had had in those deeds of horror. And Jean, who dared neither take her hand nor embrace his friend, left the room with the air of one crazed by grief.
'I will return soon.
It was dark, however, nearly eight o'clock, before he was able to redeem his promise. Notwithstanding his great distress he was happy; his regiment had been transferred from the first to the second line and assigned the task of protecting the quartier, so that, bivouacking with his company in the Place du Carrousel, he hoped to get a chance to run in each evening to see how the wounded man was getting on. And he did not return alone; as luck would have it he had fallen in with the former surgeon of the 106th and had brought him along with him, having been unable to find another doctor, consoling himself with the reflection that the terrible, big man with the lion's mane was not such a bad sort of fellow after all.
When Bouroche, who knew nothing of the patient he was summoned with such insistence to attend and
