'Oh cruel! Does one ask the humble votary if he would approach the divinity?'
Cold, green eyes stared into the Russian's. 'I did not invite you to make love to me, merely to dance this waltz,' she said concisely.
This time, his only answer was a bow and a smile which showed a glint of white teeth. As they stepped on to the floor, Marianne let fall her broken fan and, catching up her long train, abandoned her waist to her partner's encircling arm. He swooped on it like a bird of prey and bore her off into the midst of the dancers with such enthusiasm that she could not help a small, sad smile.
She did not love this man but he desired her, unashamedly, and in her present confused state Marianne was ready to find comfort in any kind of positive feeling, even that. He was a perfect dancer with an amazing sense of time and to Marianne, whirling in his arms, it seemed as if she were floating on air. The waltz seemed to free her from the weight of her body. If only her mind could be freed of its burdens as easily!
As she danced, she saw the Emperor seated on his throne, the Empress at his side, speaking quietly, but her eyes did not linger, and already Chernychev had swept her on, his gloved hand firmly clasping her waist. Next she saw Jason, dancing with his wife. Their eyes met briefly but Marianne looked away hurriedly and moved by some feminine impulse of coquetry, by the need which lurks deep in every woman to deal blow for blow and give back hurt for hurt, she favoured the Russian with her most dazzling smile.
'You are very quiet, my dear Count,' she said, loudly enough to be overheard by the American couple. 'Has joy robbed you of your tongue?'
'You forbade me to make love to you, Princess, and since I cannot think of anything else…'
'Do you know so little of women that you always take them so literally? Surely you know we sometimes like to be disobeyed, if it is done gracefully enough?'
The Russian's green eyes darkened very nearly to black. His arm tightened in a way that left no doubt of his delight at this unexpected softening. Marianne's sudden cordiality appeared to stir him to such transports of joy that any moment she expected him to burst into some savage yell of triumph. He restrained himself, however, and merely leaned a little closer, until his cheek was pressed against her forehead and his hot breath was on her neck. Held tight against him, conscious of the hardness of his muscles, Marianne had the momentary fancy that she was dancing with some well-regulated machine.
'Take care how you drive me to disobey you,' he murmured passionately into her ear. 'I might want more than you are ready to grant, and when I want something, I do not give up until I have it.'
'But – surely you have got what you wanted? We are dancing together, and I think I even smiled at you.'
'That's just it! With such a woman, how can a man help wanting more and more?'
'Oh, indeed?' Her smile challenged him.
But she was not fated to learn how far Chernychev's desires might have carried him that night, for suddenly, without warning, he uttered an inarticulate cry, startling the couples closest to them out of their abandonment to the music. Marianne found herself released, so abruptly that she kept her feet only by a miracle. Before she could find her voice to protest, or ask him what he meant by it, she saw the Russian officer thrust his way unceremoniously between the pairs of dancers on the floor and spring for the ballroom wall, both arms outstretched to snatch at one of the flimsy garlands of artificial roses which had caught fire from a sagging candle in one the gilded holders and was blazing merrily. Heedless of burned bands, Chernychev tore down the garland but already it was too late. The flames had seized on the silvery gauzes draping the canvas walls and were spreading rapidly. Within seconds, the whole wall was ablaze.
With one great gasp of horror, the dancers pressed back to the other side of the room, towards the throne. Carried along with the rest, Marianne found herself standing close to Napoleon as Prince Eugene, who had been chatting to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Champagny, at a little distance, forced his way urgently to the Emperor's side. She saw the young viceroy say something quietly to the Emperor who turned at once and took Marie-Louise by the arm.
'Come,' he said. The room is on fire. We must go.'
But the young Empress remained seated, her eyes riveted on the blazing wall, apparently fascinated by the flames.
'Come, Louise!' the Emperor commanded. Almost dragging her from her chair, he hurried her swiftly in the direction of the passage to the house. Marianne tried to follow them but a movement of panic in the crowd lifted her like a straw and bore her helplessly towards the opening leading into the grounds. Nothing, now, could have halted the terror-stricken throng. In another instant, the oiled canvas roof was alight. The fire ran along the other walls with terrifying speed. One by one, the gilded chandeliers with their loads of lighted candles fell from the ceiling on to the milling crowd below, felling some and setting fire to the clothes of others. A girl's dress of blue tulle became a sheet of flame. Screaming in agony, she hurled herself like a living torch blindly into the crowd which, far from offering her any assistance, only tried frantically to avoid her. One officer did rip off his jacket and throw it round her in an effort to smother the flames but both were soon swallowed up in the hysterical stampede.
Very soon, the exits, the tall windows in the canvas walls and the passageway by which the Emperor had left, were blocked by the fire. The gallery itself was blazing, carrying the fire straight into the embassy drawing-rooms. Now the only passable way out was by the lofty doorway opening into the gardens and towards this the crowd surged with all the violence of water bursting through a dam. A thick, suffocating black smoke was filling the blazing ballroom, stinging the eyes and lungs.
To escape it, men and women fought their way towards the single exit with a savage fury, thrusting with fists and elbows, trampling one another down, battling for life with no thought for anything beyond the naked, primitive instinct of self-preservation.
The women were the first to fall, trodden down by the more powerful males, by the very man perhaps who, only a moment before, had been bowing with exquisite grace over the very fingers he now crushed beneath his heel, or murmuring sweet nothings into ears he would have torn off ruthlessly if it would help him to escape more quickly and win through into the blessed, breathable fresh air outside.
Carried away in the midst of this desperate scramble for life, bruised, half-stifled with smoke and by the pressure of so many human bodies, the train ripped from her dress, Marianne had a horrified vision of glaring eyes and screaming mouths, of faces contorted with terror. The heat was unbearable and the drifts of smoke that filled the room with a thick, grey fog made her feel as if her lungs would burst. Among the press of heads around her, she caught sight of Savary's, bobbing like some absurd ship on an angry sea. The Minister of Police was looking very nearly as green as his braided uniform but, shrieking incomprehensibly, he was making a vain attempt to bring some order into the panic-stricken crowd.
The opening leading into the garden was not far away now but the hangings with which it was draped were already beginning to burn and the pressure of the crowd was growing ever more frantic as each person fought to get across the threshold before the way was barred by the flames. Such was the press of bodies with everyone trying to escape at once that the crowd became jammed tight in the doorway, like the cork of a bottle. It was impossible to move, either forward or backwards. People struggled wildly. Marianne was hit in the chest by a senator's flailing elbow and felt hands grasping her hair. Fortunately for her, there was, not far behind her in the crowd, a giant of a man, a great, bearded, bear-like creature whose massive shoulders were clad in the brilliant uniform of the Russian guard. This man was fighting like a fury, pushing at the crowd in front of him with his great hands. Sparks from a falling chandelier set light to his hair and, uttering an inhuman cry, he gave such a violent thrust that the human stopper burst out into the open amid billows of smoke. Marianne found herself, horribly bruised about the chest but safe, outside the ballroom, on the steps leading to the gardens. But she had hardly drawn a breath of slightly cooler air into her lungs before an anguished cry broke from her. A woman beside her groaned piteously, then another gave a shriek that ended on a choking sob. The lamps which had twinkled so gaily on the outside of the ballroom were tipping over, spilling hot oil on to the bare shoulders and uncovered breasts below, causing fearful injuries. Marianne stumbled forward towards an ornamental pool whose waters glowed redly. Servants were hurrying towards it with buckets and basins: none too soon, for by now the ballroom doorway was ablaze.