Belle Rose: A Romance of the Cloak and Sword — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

94 THE DREAMS OF A SUMMER DAY. a trembling light, while the somber clumps of the trees in the park vailed the uncertain horizon. Belle-Rose opened the window and bared his forehead to the fresh breezes of the night; the agitation of his thoughts did not permit him to taste repose, and instead of delivering his mind to the dreams of sleep, he abandoned it to the dreams of love. He had been dreaming for an hour or two, when he saw the black curtain of trees illuminated under the red re- flections of a sudden light. Flames succeeded flames, and their splendor made purple the sky where paled the stars. Belle-Rose, astonished, crossed his window-sill and turned to the story where Madame de _ Chateaufort slept. A thousand flames were escaping through the balconies where whirled streams of sparks. At the same moment cries of fright came from all sides, and the women ser- vants of the duchess, surprised by the fire in the midst of their sleep, rushed from room to room, half-naked; full of terror they ran at hazard, fleeing the flames which crawled along the facades, devoured the hangings, ex- panded like flaming plumes at the end of the chimneys, and rolled like waves under the propulsion of the wind. The guards and lackeys, awakened by the threatening noises of the fire, armed themselves with ladders and buckets; all the domestics in the chateau were on foot in a moment and ran to the detached building on which the fire was preying. Belle-Rose was the first to recognize the imminence and extent of the peril; the fire, communi- cated, no doubt, to some curtain by a neglected candle, ought to make rapid progress in an apartment where the carpets, the hangings, the furniture heaped together lent a thousand aids to its impetuosity. A cry of horror es- caped his lips, he rushed to the stair-way, and in a second succeeded in gaining the story occupied by Madame de Chateaufort. Fright lent him treble strength; the first door he came across was shattered at the first shock, and he threw himself into the hall filled with flames. The maids passed by his side like phantoms. Belle-Rose kept on advancing, a last door fell under the effort of his pow- erful hands, a whirlwind of smoke and sparks enveloped him; but he had already seized in his arms the body of a woman who was calling him. Then, more rapid than an arrow, inspired by the precious burden reposing on his breast, bounding over the blackened floor, between cal- cined walls, down the burning stair-way, he crossed the penon with the startling rapidity of a shadow, and fleeing the fire whose refulgsnce pursued him, he deposited Gen- (E(0) micboo Ss (€(e)