This paralysed the faculties, so that even the bravest found his limbs benumbed and his brain bewildered. No company of raw recruits could have worked to less purpose--some crying for hatchets, some vainly for water, yet all incapable of rendering any useful aid, and all equally terrified by the spectacle they beheld. Alas! to see those pitiful faces at the window of the barn above; to watch the flames creeping about them; to behold them fall one by one into the deadly furnace behind them; and to know that they were Frenchmen and brethren! Such was the price of the brief respite we had enjoyed; such was the hospitality that the woman Petrovka had shown us.
Someone got a ladder about this time, and others found axes in the wood-house of the farm. I was among the latter, and I remember with what fury our little party attacked the great front gates and tried to force an entrance. Could we but burst the bolt, our comrades were free in a twinkling; and you may imagine how we went at it--the blows which we struck, and the curses we uttered.
Minute by minute now the flames were creeping toward this end of the barn. We had no need of lanterns; the snow was blood-red, and the very wood stood out as though the sun were setting and the night not yet begun. Had we any longer a doubt that treachery had fired the barn, the disappearance of the Russians themselves would have clenched the argument. Not a peasant did we see, not a man or woman of those who had served us last night and welcomed us with such smiling faces. The whole farm had become a desert, and, be sure, that of them all Petrovka had been the first to go.
Such was my opinion for a long time, and it endured until, to my great astonishment, I perceived her at Léon's side, and saw that he was in close talk with her. Good God! that a man could have argued with such a woman when his comrades were perishing--that he did not strike her down where she stood! Any other but Léon would have done so; yet, when was the day that a woman's eyes could not win him?
All this went through my head in a flash as I hewed at the giant doors and called upon my comrades to redouble their efforts. The shrieks within the building were now most dreadful to hear. None but a man of iron could have remained deaf to the piercing cries which marked the approach of the fire and told us that our task must be impotent. None the less, we worked with a vigour unimaginable, while the heat became choking, and showers of glowing sparks rained down upon us. The very snow was melted far away from the barn by this time; the sky had turned blood red; the branches of the trees were burning. The great door alone stood between our comrades and salvation.