The Debacle - Emile Zola [271]
Then to the right there was first the Palace of the Legion of Honour which had been fired at five in the afternoon and had been burning for nearly seven hours, and now it was being consumed like a great bonfire in which all the wood is burning up at once. Next there was the Palais du Conseil d’Etat, the most immense, ghastly and terrifying blaze of all, a gigantic cube of masonry with two superimposed colonnades belching forth flames. The four blocks surrounding the inner courtyard had caught fire simultaneously, and there the paraffin, emptied in barrelfuls down the four corner staircases, had run in cataracts of hell-fire all down the steps. On the river frontage the clear outline of the attic storey stood out in black tiers against the red tongues licking its edges, while the colonnades, entablatures, friezes and sculptures took on an extraordinary relief in the blinding light of a furnace. In this building above all there was such a strong rush of flame that the colossal pile seemed to be almost lifted by it, shaking and rumbling on its foundations, keeping only its carcass of thick walls in this violent eruption that was hurling its zinc roofing up into the sky. And next door one whole side of the Orsay barracks was burning in a lofty white column like a tower of light. And finally behind all this there were still more fires, the seven houses in the rue du Bac, the twenty-two houses in the rue de Lille, lighting up the horizon, flames on flames in an endless, bloody sea.
Jean could only manage to murmur:
‘Oh God, it isn’t possible! The river itself will catch fire.’
And indeed the boat seemed to be floating on a river of fire. In the dancing reflections of these huge conflagrations the Seine appeared to be bearing along blazing coals. Sudden red flashes played over it in shimmering patches of flame. And they were still floating downstream on this burning water, between these palaces in flames, as if in an endless street in an accursed city, burning on each side of a roadway of molten lava.
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Maurice in his turn, his frenzy returning in the face of this destruction he had wanted to see, ‘let the whole lot go up in flames!’
Jean stopped him with a terrified gesture, as though afraid such a blasphemy would bring a curse upon them. Could it possibly be that a man he loved so dearly, who was so well educated, so delicate in mind, had come down to such notions? He was now rowing harder, for he had passed the Solferino bridge and was in a broad, open reach. The light was as bright as a noonday sun shining straight down on the river without casting any shadow. The smallest details could be picked out with astonishing precision, the flecks of the current, heaps of stones on the towpaths, little trees on the embankments. The bridges especially stood out in blinding whiteness, so clear that you could have counted the blocks of stone, and they looked like narrow, intact passages from one fire to another over the fiery water. Occasionally, in the continuous roaring noise, sudden crashes could be heard. Flurries of soot came down and foul stenches