So people waited and watched the crowds
and listened to the pulse-beat of Paris.
The sharp staccato of revolver shots heard in the rue Montmartre on
the night of July 31 caused a shudder to pass through the city, as
though they were the signal for a criminal plot which might destroy
France by dividing it while the enemy was on the frontier.
I did not hear those shots but only the newspaper reports which
followed them almost as loudly in the soul of Paris. And yet it was only
the accidental meeting of a friend which diverted my attention of
dining in the Croissant Restaurant in which the crime took place at
the very hour when I should have been there. Some years before in
Paris, when France was in the throes of a railway strike which
developed almost to the verge of revolution, I had often gone to the
Croissant at two, three or four in the morning, because it had police
privileges to keep open all night for the comfort of journalists. Other
night birds had found this roost--ladies who sleep by day, and some
of the queer adventurers of the city which never goes to bed. One
night I had come into the midst of a strange company--the inner circle
of Parisian anarchists who were celebrating a victory over French
law.
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