She stood involuntarily rooted to the spot, looking towards the tower whence he had come. How charmingly the landscape here harmonized with the structure! How well the modern architect had known how to spare and now to efface so as to weave about the old ruin a romantic charm!
Silence reigned again; no sound was heard but the faint flapping of the doves’ wings; those graceful sailors of the air were floating in the crimson evening light, slipping through the interstices of the mural crown of the tower as it showed clear against the western sky—No, it was no mural crown! in a flash it was a burning crater, vomiting forth with a noise like thunder a cloud of pitchy vapour into the serene skies. The ground seemed to be torn from beneath the girl’s feet. She was dashed to the earth and in an instant immersed in the cool waters of the fosse.
What was it? Every one came running from the villa to take refuge in the garden. The house tottered from foundation to roof-tree. An earthquake? As if bereft of all sense, the members of the household stood still in the open air as though expecting to see the earth yawn at their feet. Little rills of water were trickling through the grass of the lawn. The air began to be filled with smoke, and to scatter everywhere on the gravel walks particles of burned material. The panes of plate-glass in the windows were broken; and in the ball-room the huge mirror stretching from floor to ceiling lay shattered into a thousand pieces, the silk and velvet draperies had dropped from their fastenings around the stage, and the workmen had with difficulty escaped injury from the falling framework.
Passers-by rushed in from the road, among them Anton, who was just returning from town. "There! there!" they cried to the Frau President, who was leaning half fainting upon Flora’s arm, and as they spoke they pointed to the distant portion of the park. There was a fire in that direction, and huge volumes of smoke were pouring upwards so thickly that the sparks showed in its pitchy blackness like rockets in a dark night.
"The powder in the tower has exploded!" a voice cried from the midst of the throng.
"Nonsense!" Anton replied, with an attempt at a laugh, although his teeth were chattering in his head with terror. "That old stuff has long been past exploding, and the few pinches of fresh which the Herr Councillor had stored there in jest could not have stirred a tile from its place."