"Why?" I questioned.
"Because there is an Austrian brokerage firm that has been selling like mad—started all the trouble; it is the identical firm that two years ago—" His voice broke off suddenly. "Listen!" he then shouted. We made a rush to the front windows looking upon the Boulevard des Italiens near the Opera.
The street was seething, which signified exactly nothing, for the Caillaux case had kept the boulevards stirred up for days.
"They are yelling, 'Down with Caillaux!'" I said, as we tore open the window sashes.
"No—it's something else."
We leaned far out. Under the lights moved thousands of heads. Hundreds were reading the latest editions, but in the middle of the road a mob was surging, and we heard a monotonous cry. It was a cry heard that night in Paris for the first time in forty-four years.
The mob was shouting, "To Berlin!"
I slammed shut the window. "Cut that Caillaux cable to a thousand words," I yelled, as I seized my hat, ran down the stairs, and plunged into the crowd, snatching the latest editions as I ran.
The Austro-Serb and Russian news had become worse within a few hours, and there were already rumors of Franco-German frontier incidents. I hurried along the boulevards, calling at the offices of the Matin and the London Daily Mail, but could get no inside information; nothing but official announcements which would be cabled by the news agencies, and did not interest me, the correspondent of a paper receiving all agency matter.
Later I returned to my office, cabled a story that pictured the scene in the boulevards and gave some details concerning the Austrian brokerage firm that had precipitated the trouble on the Bourse by its selling orders. My paper alone carried the next morning the significant information that this same Austrian house, with high Vienna connections, had made an enormous fortune just two years before, when it had accurate and precise information concerning the hour that the conflict in the Balkans would begin.