| |
Flames licked up the walls of the old palace, once the home to the exiled Portuguese royal family in the early nineteenth century. The paint bubbled and popped until, at last, the fire’s heat burned through the plaster. The fire didn’t stop at the walls; its angry destruction made short work of the dried, mummified remains of ancient Egyptians stored behind plexiglass. Papyrus and shabtis met a similar fate. Butterfly, bug, and arachnid collections disappeared in a matter of seconds as the inferno ripped through their cases. Feathered Incan fans disappeared into smoke, and pottery, wedding accessories from another time in human history, shattered and melted from the intense heat. The angry fire demon tore through dozens of rooms filled with the two hundred-year-old collection of the country’s prized artifacts—over twenty million in all. Within hours of the first spark, the roof collapsed, and the fiery fingers no longer simply glowed and snapped from behind the dozens of fragmented windows, instead burst upward, allowing the black, sooty smoke to blend into the inky sky. By morning, only the façade of the exterior shell remained of the palatial structure, and a devastating number of cultural artifacts lay destroyed in a pile of smoldering rubble, slag, and cinders.