The King in Yellow – Day 52 of 87
The girl accepted shyly, charging him with loads of loving messages to Sylvia, and he said good-night.
He started up the street, walking swiftly, for it was bitter cold, and cutting across the rue de la Lune he entered the rue de Seine. The early winter night had fallen, almost without warning, but the sky was clear and myriads of stars glittered in the heavens. The bombardment had become furious–a steady rolling thunder from the Prussian cannon punctuated by the heavy shocks from Mont Valérien.
The shells streamed across the sky leaving trails like shooting stars, and now, as he turned to look back, rockets blue and red flared above the horizon from the Fort of Issy, and the Fortress of the North flamed like a bonfire.
“Good news!” a man shouted over by the Boulevard St. Germain. As if by magic the streets were filled with people,–shivering, chattering people with shrunken eyes.
“Jacques!” cried one. “The Army of the Loire!”
“Eh! mon vieux, it has come then at last! I told thee! I told thee! To-morrow–to-night–who knows?”
“Is it true? Is it a sortie?”
Some one said: “Oh, God–a sortie–and my son?” Another cried: “To the Seine? They say one can see the signals of the Army of the Loire from the Pont Neuf.”
There was a child standing near Trent who kept repeating: “Mamma, Mamma, then to-morrow we may eat white bread?” and beside him, an old man swaying, stumbling, his shrivelled hands crushed to his breast, muttering as if insane.
“Could it be true? Who has heard the news? The shoemaker on the rue de Buci had it from a Mobile who had heard a Franctireur repeat it to a captain of the National Guard.”
Trent followed the throng surging through the rue de Seine to the river.
Rocket after rocket clove the sky, and now, from Montmartre, the cannon clanged, and the batteries on Montparnasse joined in with a crash. The bridge was packed with people.
Trent asked: “Who has seen the signals of the Army of the Loire?”
“We are waiting for them,” was the reply.
He looked toward the north. Suddenly the huge silhouette of the Arc de Triomphe sprang into black relief against the flash of a cannon. The boom of the gun rolled along the quay and the old bridge vibrated.
Again over by the Point du Jour a flash and heavy explosion shook the bridge, and then the whole eastern bastion of the fortifications blazed and crackled, sending a red flame into the sky.
“Has any one seen the signals yet?” he asked again.
“We are waiting,” was the reply.
“Yes, waiting,” murmured a man behind him, “waiting, sick, starved, freezing, but waiting. Is it a sortie? They go gladly. Is it to starve? They starve. They have no time to think of surrender. Are they heroes,–these Parisians? Answer me, Trent!”
The American Ambulance surgeon turned about and scanned the parapets of the bridge.
“Any news, Doctor,” asked Trent mechanically.
“News?” said the doctor; “I don’t know any;–I haven’t time to know any. What are these people after?”
“They say that the Army of the Loire has signalled Mont Valérien.”
“Poor devils.” The doctor glanced about him for an instant, and then: “I’m so harried and worried that I don’t know what to do. After the last sortie we had the work of fifty ambulances on our poor little corps. To-morrow there’s another sortie, and I wish you fellows could come over to headquarters. We may need volunteers. How is madame?” he added abruptly.
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