The waiter came in hurriedly, very pale.
"An aëroplane, Monsieur! They are firing at it from the boulevard——"
His words were obliterated in the rush and clatter of horses outside.
Dragoons were galloping up the stony rue d'Auros, squadron on squadron, and behind them rattled three high-angle guns harnessed to teams driven by dragoons.
"Attention there!" shouted an officer, reining in and halting a peloton of horsemen. "Fire at will from your saddles!"
Warner sprang to the window; the street and the market square was full of halted cavalry firing skyward. They had several high-angle guns there too; the ear-splitting detonations became continuous; and all the time the solid earth was shaking under terrible detonations from the fort's cupolas, where the big cannon were concealed.
From everywhere came the treble clink and tinkle of broken glass; people in the hotel were running to the windows and running away from them; the building itself seemed to sway slightly; dust hung in the air, greying everything.
Warner drew Philippa to him and said calmly, but close to her ear:
"The thing to do is to get out of this at the first opportunity. I had no idea that anything would happen as near——"
His voice was blotted out in a loud report, shouts, a woman screaming, the rumble and tumbling roar of bricks. Another shattering report almost deafened him; the air was filled with whizzing, whining noises; the entire front of a shop diagonally across the street caved in with a crystalline crash of glass, and the cornice above it lurched outward, swayed, crumpled, and descended in a pouring avalanche of bricks and mortar.