I sat in the window and watched the mob do its work. The torn planks were used as battering rams through the plate glass, through the expensive statuary and costly vases. In five minutes the place was a ruin. Then the cuirassiers came and drove the crowd away. Duranty returned with the details of the story. I asked him what the police had said to the crowd.
"A man came out holding a marble Adonis by the arm," he replied. "A cop said to him, 'Be good now—be good!' and the chap replied, 'Well, if I can't smash it, you smash it!'—So the cop took it and leaped upon it with both feet."
"Write it," I said; "also the Gare du Nord story."
It was midnight and the uproar was greater than ever. Processions blocks long wended through the middle of the streets singing the "Marseillaise," the "Carmagnole" and other fire-eating songs of the Revolution. Through it all I worked, and steadily sent messenger after messenger to the Bourse with the latest news from the various scenes of action. No signs yet of the censor.
About one o'clock the crowd concentrated just below my window. The cries grew fiercer and louder, with a more terrible note. I went to the window. The faces of the mob were turned to an upper window of the building next door. Some rash voice had shouted from that window a cry that no man might shout that night in Paris with safety. He had cried: "Hurrah for Germany!"
I crawled out on my window ledge and watched. The crowd filled the street completely. They watched that upper window, they yelled their rage and they battered against a great grilled iron door that baffled their efforts. The police tried to disperse them, but as soon as the street was partly cleared they surged back again. They hung about that door, their faces turned up, the hate showing in their eyes, their mouths open, bellowing forth their rage. They waited as patiently as wolves that have surrounded a quarry that must come out to meet them soon. But the waiting was so long that I crawled back from my window ledge into the office.
I finished a despatch that I had compiled from various documents given out to the morning papers by the Foreign Ministry, and of which I had secured a copy. They were an undisputable proof that Germany meant war on France, for they noted a dozen incidents proving that German mobilization had been under way for days. The dawn was breaking as I pushed my chair from the desk.
I told the stenographer and other assistants to go home and get some sleep—not to report again until late afternoon. Duranty, who, like myself, kept no hours but worked always while there was work to do, sauntered into the private room. He had counted the words of copy that had been filed that night—nearly twenty thousand.
The yelling of the mob below had given way to low rumbling. We had ceased to think about it. We lighted our pipes and yawned.
"Shall we cut it out for a few hours?" Duranty asked.