fire rises
there was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went
1 daily to hammer out of the stones on the high way such
2 of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. the prison on the crag was not so
3 as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do—beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.
far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the
4 people. everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. habitations fences,
5 animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them—all worn out.
monseigneur (often a most
6 individual gentleman) was a national
7, gave a
8 tone to things, was a polite example of
9 and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. strange that creation, designed expressly for monseigneur, should be so soon
10 dry and squeezed out! there must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase
11, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable.
but, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. for scores of years gone by, monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase—now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose
12 monseigneur made
13 spaces of barbarous and barren
14. no. the change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the
15 of the high-caste,
16, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features of monseigneur.
for, in these times, as the mender of roads worked,
17, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it—in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, and viewed the
18, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. as it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost
19 aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the
20 moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and
21 of many byways through woods.
such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the july weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of hail.
the man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. when he had identified these objects in what
22 mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just
23:
“how goes it, jacques?”
“all well, jacques.”
“touch then!”
they joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.
“no dinner?”
“nothing but supper now,” said the mender of roads, with a hungry face.
“it is the fashion,”
24 the man. “i meet no dinner anywhere.”
he took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a
25 of smoke.
“touch then.” it was the turn of the mender of roads to say it this time, after observing these operations. they again joined hands.
“tonight?” said the mender of roads.
“tonight,” said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.
“where?”
“here.”
he and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village.
“show me!” said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill.
“see!” returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. “you go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain—”
“to the devil with all that!” interrupted the other, rolling his eye over the landscape. “i go through no streets and past no fountains. well?”
“well! about two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the village.”
“good. when do you cease to work?”
“at sunset.”
“will you wake me before departing? i have walked two nights without resting. let me finish my pipe, and i shall sleep like a child. will you wake me?”
“surely.”
the
26 smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. he was fast asleep directly.
as the road mender
27 his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and
28 of sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. his eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account. the bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough
30 dress of homespun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame
31 by spare living, and the
32 and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender of roads with
33. the traveller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles
34 and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he himself was into sores. stooping down beside him, the road mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as
35 as his lips.
36 towns with their
37, guardhouses, gates,
38, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. and when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all over france.
the man slept on indifferent to showers of hail and
39 of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the pattering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him.
“good!” said the
40, rising on his elbow. “two leagues beyond the summit of the hill?”
“about.”
“about. good!”
the mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village. when the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. a curious
41 of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. monsieur gabelle, chief
42 of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-by.
the night deepened. the trees environing the old
43, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed
44 up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last marquis had slept. east, west, north, and south, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. four lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again.
but, not for long. presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing
45. then, a
46 29 played behind the architecture of the front, picking out
47 places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and windows were. then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces
48, stared out of fire.
a faint
49 arose about the house from the few people who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. there was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and
50 was
51 in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a
52 stood at monsieur gabelle’s door. “help, gabelle! help, every one!” the tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. the mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. “it must be forty feet high,” said they, grimly; and never moved.
the rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam,
53 away through the village, and
54 up the
55 steep, to the prison on the crag. at the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from them, a group of soldiers. “help, gentleman officers! the chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by timely aid! help, help!” the officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered with
56 and biting of lips, “it must burn.”
as the rider
57 down the hill again and through the street, the village was
58. the mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of
59 up, had
60 into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little
61 of glass. the general
62 of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather
63 manner of monsieur gabelle; and in a moment of
64 and
65 on that functionary’s part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.
the chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. in the roaring and raging of the
66, a red-hot wind, driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the
67 away. with the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in
68. when great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire.
the chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire,
69 and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the heat, and
70 down into four
71 wells of flame. great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace; four fierce figures
72 away, east, west, north, and south, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the
73 they had lighted, towards their next destination. the
74 village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the
75 ringer, rang for joy.
not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that monsieur gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes—though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that gabelle had got in those latter days—became impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. whereupon, monsieur gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. the result of that conference was, that gabelle again withdrew himself to his house-top behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small southern man of
76 temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below.
probably, monsieur gabelle passed a long night up there with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp
77 across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively
78 to displace in his favour. a trying
79, to be passing a whole summer night on the
80 of the black ocean, ready to take that
81 into it upon which monsieur gabelle had resolved! but, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village
82 out, the people happily
83, and monsieur gabelle came down bringing his life with him for that while.
within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other
84 less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. but, the fierce figures were
85 wending east, west, north, and south, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. the altitude of the
86 that would turn to water and
87 it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.