Through the gaping doorway sprang Sengoun, his empty pistol menacing the crowd that choked the shadowy street; Neeland flung away his pistol and turned his revolver on those in the café behind him, as Ilse Dumont and the Russian girl crept through and out into the street.
The crowd was cheering and shouting:
“Down with the Germans! To the Brasserie Schwarz!” 389
An immense wave of people surged suddenly across the rue Vilna, headed toward the German cafés on the Boulevard; and then, for the first time, Neeland caught sight of policemen standing in little groups, coolly watching the destruction of the Café des Bulgars.
Either they were too few to cope with the mob, or they were indifferent as to what was being done to a German café, but one thing was plain; the police had not the faintest idea that murder had been rampant in the place. For, when suddenly a dead body was thrown from the door out on the sidewalk, their police whistles shrilled through the street, and they started for the mob, resolutely, pushing, striking with white-gloved fists, shouting for right of way.
Other police came running, showing that they had been perfectly aware that German cafés were being attacked and wrecked. A mounted inspector forced his horse along the swarming sidewalk, crying:
“Allons! Circulez! C’est défendu de s’attrouper dans la rue! Mais fichez-moi le camp, nom de Dieu! Les Allemands ne sont pas encore dans la place!”
Along the street and on the Boulevard mobs were forming and already storming three other German cafés; a squadron of Republican Guard cavalry arrived at a trot, their helmets glittering in the increasing daylight, driving before them a mob which had begun to attack a café on the corner.
A captain, superbly mounted, rode ahead of the advancing line of horses, warning the throng back into the rue Vilna, up which the mob now recoiled, sullenly protesting.
Neeland and Sengoun and the two women were forced back with the crowd as a double rank of steel-helmeted 390 horsemen advanced, sweeping everybody into the rue Vilna.