It was a dry storm; the rain fell elsewhere.

The incessant lightning, accompanied by distant thunder, gleamed from all quarters of the horizon, and darted its luminous flashes over the whole extent of the plain.

At intervals the hills seemed to be on fire.

Several times Samuel, who stood with his nose against the glass of the car-door, thought that he saw in the direction of Cormeilles the flaring light of a conflagration, in which were blazing his dream and two millions, to say nothing of his great expectations.
He bitterly reproached himself for his folly of the previous day.

"If I had passed yesterday evening with her," he thought, "surely she would have spoken of the Princess Gulof.