Those who had axes and had spent their fury on the
movables, chopped and tore down the doors and window frames, broke up
the flooring, hewed away the rafters, and buried men who lingered in the
upper rooms, in heaps of ruins. Some searched the drawers, the chests,
the boxes, writing-desks, and closets, for jewels, plate, and money;
while others, less mindful of gain and more mad for destruction, cast
their whole contents into the courtyard without examination, and called
to those below, to heap them on the blaze. Men who had been into the
cellars, and had staved the casks, rushed to and fro stark mad, setting
fire to all they saw--often to the dresses of their own friends--and
kindling the building in so many parts that some had no time for
escape, and were seen, with drooping hands and blackened faces, hanging
senseless on the window-sills to which they had crawled, until they were
sucked and drawn into the burning gulf. The more the fire crackled and
raged, the wilder and more cruel the men grew; as though moving in that
element they became fiends, and changed their earthly nature for the
qualities that give delight in hell.
The burning pile, revealing rooms and passages red hot, through gaps
made in the crumbling walls; the tributary fires that licked the outer
bricks and stones, with their long forked tongues, and ran up to meet
the glowing mass within; the shining of the flames upon the villains who
looked on and fed them; the roaring of the angry blaze, so bright and
high that it seemed in its rapacity to have swallowed up the very smoke;
the living flakes the wind bore rapidly away and hurried on with, like
a storm of fiery snow; the noiseless breaking of great beams of wood,
which fell like feathers on the heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very
act to sparks and powder; the lurid tinge that overspread the sky,
and the darkness, very deep by contrast, which prevailed around; the
exposure to the coarse, common gaze, of every little nook which usages
of home had made a sacred place, and the destruction by rude hands of
every little household favourite which old associations made a dear
and precious thing: all this taking place--not among pitying looks and
friendly murmurs of compassion, but brutal shouts and exultations,
which seemed to make the very rats who stood by the old house too long,
creatures with some claim upon the pity and regard of those its roof had
sheltered:--combined to form a scene never to be forgotten by those who
saw it and were not actors in the work, so long as life endured.
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