dark, silent, motionless, not a breath of air and not a star, but
heavy banks of clouds which one could not see, but which weighed,
oh! so heavily on my soul.

I looked at my house and waited. How long it was! I already began
to think that the fire had gone out of its own accord, or that He
had extinguished it, when one of the lower windows gave way under
the violence of the flames, and a long, soft, caressing sheet of
red flame mounted up the white wall, and kissed it as high as the
roof. The light fell on to the trees, the branches, and the
leaves, and a shiver of fear pervaded them also! The birds awoke;
a dog began to howl, and it seemed to me as if the day were
breaking! Almost immediately two other windows flew into
fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part of my house
was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible,
shrill, heart-rending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the
night, and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the
servants! I saw the terror-struck faces, and the frantic waving
of their arms!

Then, overwhelmed with horror, I ran off to the village,
shouting: "Help! help! fire! fire!" Meeting some people who were
already coming on to the scene, I went back with them to see!

By this time the house was nothing but a horrible and magnificent
funeral pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a
pyre where men were burning, and where He was burning also, He,
He, my prisoner, that new Being, the new Master, the Horla!

Suddenly the whole roof fell in between the walls, and a volcano