In the centre stood a group of general officers, field-glasses in hand, with sword-belts unbuckled. At each shot, they watched the effect through their glasses and then nodded their heads with an air of satisfaction.
But a great commotion now took place among them. They drew up in single rank, assuming a stiff and automatic attitude, while the soldiers continued to serve the guns. And suddenly, from behind the fortress, a motor-car appeared, accompanied by an escort of cavalry. It stopped on the emplacement and from it there alighted a man wearing a helmet and a long fur-cloak, which was lifted at the side by the scabbard of a sword of which he held the hilt. He stepped briskly to the foreground. We recognised the Kaiser.
He shook hands with one of the generals. The others saluted more stiffly than ever and then, at a sign from their master, extended and formed a semicircle around him and the general whose hand he had shaken.
A conversation ensued. The general, after an explanation accompanied by gestures that pointed towards the town, called for a telescope and had it correctly pointed. The Kaiser put his eye to it.
One of the guns was ready. The order to fire was given.
Two pictures followed each other on the screen in quick succession: that of a carved stone balustrade smashed to pieces by the shell and that of the emperor drawing himself up immediately afterwards. He had seen! He had seen; and his face, which appeared to us suddenly enlarged and alone upon the screen, beamed with intense delight!
He began to talk volubly. His sensual lips, his upturned moustache, his wrinkled and fleshy cheeks were all moving at the same time. But, when another gun was obviously on the point of firing, he held his peace and looked in the direction of the town. Just then he raised his hand to a level just below his eyes, so that we saw them by themselves, between the hand and the peak of the helmet. They were hard, evil, proud, implacable. They wore the expression of the miraculous Three Eyes that had throbbed before us on the screen.
They lit up, glittering with an evil smile. They saw what we saw at the same time, a whole block of capitals and cornices falling to the ground and more flames rising in angry pillars of fire. Then the emperor burst out laughing. One picture showed him doubled up in two and holding his sides amid the group of generals all seized with the same uncontrollable laughter. He was laughing! He was laughing! It was so amusing! Rheims Cathedral was ablaze! The venerable fabric to which the kings of France used to come for their coronation was falling into ruins! The might of Germany was striking the enemy in his very heart! The German heavy guns were things that were noble and beautiful! And it was he who had ordained it, he, the emperor, the King of Prussia, master of the world, William of Hohenzollern! . . . . Oh, the joy of laughing his fill, laughing to his heart's content, laughing the frank, honest laughter of a jolly German!
A storm of hoots and hisses broke loose in the amphitheatre. The crowd had risen in a body, shaking their fists and bellowing forth insults. The attendants had to struggle with a troop of angry men who had invaded the orchestra.
Théodore Massignac, behind the bars of his cage, stooped and pressed the button.