on in silence. Not a cry arose; not a human sigh mingled with the smoke; this furnace was struggling to devour this village, and succeeding, without a sound save the snapping of the timbers and the crackling of the thatch. Occasionally, the smoke cleared away, the roofs fallen in, displayed the yawning rooms, the brazier showed its rubies, scarlet rags and poor old crimson colored furniture appeared in these vermilion interiors, and Tellmarch was dazed with the viciousness of the disaster.
Some trees belonging to a chestnut-grove next the houses had taken fire and were blazing up.
He listened, trying to catch the sound of a voice, an appeal, a cry; nothing stirred except the flames; all was silent except the fire. Had all of them fled?
Where was that group of people living and working at Herbe-en-Pali? What had become of this little people?
Tellmarch came down from the hill.
A funereal enigma confronted him. He approached it slowly and with a steady gaze. He advanced toward this ruin with the slowness of a shadow; he felt like a phantom in this tomb.
He reached what had been the door of the farmhouse; and he looked into the court, which now was without walls and was confounded with the hamlet grouped around it.
What he had seen before was nothing. He had only seen the terrible as yet,—the horrible appeared to him now.
In the middle of the court, there was a black heap, vaguely outlined on one side by flames, on the other by the moon; this heap was a pile of men; these men were dead.
All around this heap there was a great pool, smoking a little; the fire was reflected in this pool; but it had no need of fire to make it red; it was blood.
Tellmarch approached it. He began to examine, one after another, these prostrate bodies; all were corpses.
The moon was shining; the fire too.
These corpses were soldiers. All were barefooted; their shoes had been taken off; their weapons had been taken away, too; they still had on their uniforms, which were blue. Here and there, in the heap of limbs and heads, could be seen hats full of holes with tricolored
