This man had the voice of a Stentor. He was also a Hercules of strength. Here and there the narrow street seemed blocked with vehicles; but when he did not terrorize the drivers into immediate flight at the sound of his voice and the sight of his club he would calmly lift the encumbrance and set it to one side.
"En avant!" he would then roar.
Where possible, however, all vehicles promptly fled the street save the omnibuses. From the imperiale of one of these came the cry,—
"Vive la république!"
"Vive l'armée!" yelled the mob.
"Vive la république!" came the response.
A dash was made for the omnibus. While four or five men held the horses a dozen or more clambered over the wheels and up the narrow steps behind. There were sixteen persons on top, seven of whom were women. The latter shrieked. Two fainted away. The assailants sprang upon the men and demanded the one who had dared to consider the health of the republic without the army. No one could or would point him out. On the apparently well established French principle that it is better that ten innocent should suffer punishment rather than that one guilty person should escape the patriotic young men assaulted everybody. A white-haired old man who protested was slapped in the face, another man was quieted by a brutal kick in the abdomen that doubled him up, a couple of foreigners who could neither understand the language nor comprehend what it was all about were roughly handled, a half-grown boy was cuffed,—everybody but the driver came in for blows and insults; and this driver of the omnibus was in all probability the real villain.
"En avant!"
This lesson was administered en route, and without stopping the main body of manifestants pressed on into the grand boulevard, to be swallowed up in the resistless human current that now flowed down upon the Place de l'Opéra.