There now remained but one house at the top of the city, which the flames surrounded in such a manner that it was impossible to extinguish them, and more impossible to enter it.  The inhabitants of Ancona had manifested so little concern for this house, that the English sailors, not believing it to be inhabited, had dragged their pumps towards the harbour.  Oswald himself, stunned by the cries of those who surrounded him and solicited his aid, had not paid attention to it.  The fire had extended the latest to that quarter, but had made considerable progress there.  Lord Nelville demanded so impatiently what house that was, that at length a man informed him it was the madhouse.  At this idea his whole soul was agitated; he turned, but found none of the sailors around him; the Count d’Erfeuil was not there either, and he would vainly have addressed himself to the inhabitants of Ancona:  they were almost all occupied in saving their merchandise, and considered it absurd to run any risk to rescue men, of whom there was not one who was not incurably mad:  “It is a blessing from Heaven,” said they, “for them, and for their relations, that they should die in this manner; without any one incurring a crime by their death.”

Whilst they held such language as this around Oswald, he proceeded with the utmost speed towards the madhouse, and the crowd, by whom he was censured, followed him with a confused sentiment of involuntary enthusiasm.  As Oswald approached the house, he saw, at the only window which was not surrounded with flames, a number of lunatics, who regarded the progress of the fire with that horrid kind of smile which either supposes ignorance of all the ills of life, or so much grief at the bottom of the soul that death in no shape can terrify it.  An inexpressible shudder seized upon Oswald at this sight; he had felt in the most dreadful moment of his despair, that his reason was on the point of being affected, and since that epoch, the aspect of madness always inspired him with the most sorrowful emotions of pity.  He seized a ladder which he found near the spot, fixed it against the wall, and entered by the window into an apartment where the unhappy people who remained in the madhouse were assembled together.

Their insanity was so harmless, that they were suffered to be at large in the interior of the house with the exception of one, who was chained in this very room, where the flames already began to appear through the door, but had not yet consumed the floor.  These miserable creatures, quite degraded by disease and suffering, were so surprised and enchanted by the appearance of Oswald among them, that they obeyed him at first without resistance.  He ordered them to descend before him, one after another, by means of the ladder, which the flames might devour in a moment.  The first of these wretched people obeyed without uttering a word; the accent and the physiognomy of Lord Nelville had entirely subdued him.  A third wished to resist, without suspecting the danger that he incurred by each moment of delay, and without thinking of the peril to which he exposed Oswald in detaining him.  The people, who felt all the horrors of his situation, cried out to Lord Nelville to return, and to let those maniacs get away how they could.  But the deliverer would listen to nothing till he had achieved his generous enterprise.