tary general, the chief detective, and Mazeroux, and clambered up the slope of the fortifications opposite the house.
"Perhaps we ought to stoop down," suggested Mazeroux.
"Let's stoop, by all means," said the Prefect, still in a good humour. "But, honestly, if there's no explosion, I shall send a bullet through my head. I could not go on living after making myself look so ridiculous."
"There will be an explosion, Monsieur le Préfet," declared Mazeroux.
"What confidence you must have in our friend Don Luis!"
"You have just the same confidence, Monsieur le Préfet."
They were silent, irritated by the wait, and struggling with the absurd anxiety that oppressed them. They counted the seconds singly, by the beating of their hearts. It was interminable.
Three o'clock sounded from somewhere.
"You see," grinned M. Desmalions, in an altered voice, "you see! There's nothing, thank goodness!"
And he growled:
"It's idiotic, perfectly idiotic! How could any one imagine such nonsense!"
Another clock struck, farther away. Then the hour also rang from the roof of a neighbouring building.
Before the third stroke had sounded they heard a kind of cracking, and, the next moment, came the terrible blast, complete, but so brief that they had only, so to speak, a vision of an immense sheaf of flames and smoke shooting forth enormous stones and pieces of wall, some-
