“Jacques!” cried one,—“The Army of the Loire!”
“Eh!” mon vieux, it has come then at last! I told thee! I told thee! To-morrow—to-night—who knows?”
“Is it true? Is it a sortie?”
Some one said: “Oh, God—a sortie—and my son?” Another cried: “to the Seine? They say one can see the signals of the Army of the Loire from the Pont Neuf.”
There was a child standing near Trent who kept repeating: “Mamma, Mamma, then to-morrow we may eat white bread?” and beside him, an old man swaying, stumbling, his shrivelled hands crushed to his breast, muttering as if insane.
“Could it be true? Who has heard the news? The shoemaker on the rue de Buci had it from a Mobile who had heard a Franc-tireur repeat it to a captain of the National Guard.”
Trent followed the throng surging through the rue de Seine to the river.
Rocket after rocket clove the sky, and now, from Montmartre, the cannon clanged, and the batteries on Montparnasse joined in with a crash. The bridge was packed with people.
Trent asked: “Who has seen the signals of the Army of the Loire?”
“We are waiting,” was the reply.
He looked toward the north. Suddenly the huge silhouette of the Arc de Triomphe sprang into black relief against the flash of a cannon. The boom of the gun rolled along the quay and the old bridge vibrated,
Again over by the Point du Jour a flash and heavy explosion shook the bridge, and then the whole eastern bastion of the fortifications
