The Slave. Micheline Bail. 1999.

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The fiery monster, fuelled by the wind, continued on its devastating path. The flames soon engulfed, one after the other, the roofs of houses adjoining the Hôtel-Dieu. Rickety wood cottages along rue Saint-Joseph ignited like torches, lighting up the sky for miles around. At the street level, people were running, screaming, some of them lugging heavy belongings, while women and children wept and moaned. Others prayed, kneeling in the mire against a pile of their meagre belongings, swearing to all the saints that they would amend their lives of sin in exchange for some miracle to save them.

Then the wind changed direction, driving the brutal beast westward, directly onto rue Saint-Paul. This time, the whole of Place du Marché was at risk of being engulfed.

A handful of militia sergeants and merchants, driven to despair, recruited carpenters, masons, and military personnel at gun point to help stave off the fire. Since the fire was raging in the east and the west,

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as well as in the north, men were dispatched into three groups, axe in hand, to tear down wooden mansards that were still in use despite restrictions.

An unexpected reinforcement came to the aid of men working axe and saw: the curate named de Grand-Maison marched towards the devastation, the Holy Sacrament brandished like a sword. Waving his sacred weapon in the direction of the fire, he implored in a loud voice, “Lord have mercy on us, poor mortals, for we have sinned.” Many faithful, caught up in his fervour, dropped everything and fell to their knees, their eyes turned towards their pastor; it was all in God’s hands…

The fiery storm raged for some two hours more before abating, finally subdued by the relentless efforts of the fire fighters. At exactly eleven, the alarm bell fell silent.

An odour of sulphur floated over the city.

[…]

The main garden of the hospital was encumbered with everyone's belongings, the survivors, half dead with fatigue and despair, slowly regained their wits, finding respite in a measly soup with bread and a spot of wine, an offering from the Récollets and the Sulpicians, who once again had been spared.

But beneath the dead coals of despair and resignation another fire was smouldering, that of anger. The word was out that the fire had been the scheme of a criminal perpetrator. It was thought that if this were the case, punishment must be exemplary!

Source: Bail, Micheline, "The Slave" (Montréal: Éditions Libre Expression, 1999), 317-318.

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