The old man shook her, implored her, strove to drag her away; in
desperation pointed to the roof above, which was already in flames.

Reine Allix looked. At that sight her mind cleared, and regained
consciousness; she remembered all, she understood all; she knew that he
was dead. "Go in peace and save yourself," she said, in the old, sweet,
strong tone of an earlier day. "As for me, I am very old. I and my dead
will stay together at home."

The man fled, and left her to her choice.

The great curled flames and the livid vapours closed around her; she
never moved. The death was fierce, but swift, and even in death she and
the one whom she had loved and reared were not divided. The end soon
came. From hill to hill the Berceau de Dieu broke into flames. The
village was a lake of fire, into which the statue of the Christ, burning
and reeling, fell. Some few peasants, with their wives and children,
fled to the woods, and there escaped one torture to perish more slowly
of cold and famine. All other things perished. The rapid stream of the
flame licked up all there was in its path. The bare trees raised their
leafless branches, on fire at a thousand points. The stores of corn
and fruit were lapped by millions of crimson tongues. The pigeons flew
screaming from their roosts, and sank into the smoke. The dogs were
suffocated on the thresholds they had guarded all their lives. The sheep
ran bleating with the wool burning on their living bodies. The little
caged birds fluttered helpless, and then dropped, scorched to cinders.
The aged and the sick were stifled in their beds. All things perished.

The Berceau de Dieu was as one vast furnace, in which every living