At midnight, when the bells of St. Sulpice rang, the gates of Paris were still jammed with the broken remains of what had once been an army.
They entered under cover of darkness, a grim, miserable horde covered in mud and barely able to stand from hunger and exhaustion.
At first, there was still some order. The people gathered at the gates silently moved aside as the soldiers marched through the freezing streets.
But as the hours passed, everything fell apart.
Squadron after squadron crowded through the gates. Batteries of artillery followed, horses stumbling and plunging, caissons jolting over the frozen ground. Cavalry and artillery fought desperately for space.
The infantry came close behind.
Here, a few surviving soldiers from a regiment struggled to maintain some kind of formation. There, groups of Mobiles pushed wildly through the streets. Horsemen rushed past, followed by cannon, officers without troops, troops without officers, and then another line of ambulances, their wheels groaning beneath their terrible loads.
The silent crowd could only watch in misery.
Ambulances had been arriving all day. All day long, ragged soldiers had stood beside the barriers, shivering and whimpering.
By noon, the crowd had grown ten times larger. People filled the squares around the gates and climbed over the inner fortifications.
At four in the afternoon, the German batteries suddenly disappeared behind clouds of smoke.
Shells began falling rapidly on Montparnasse.
Twenty minutes later, two shells struck a house in the rue de Bac.
A moment after that, the first shell landed in the Latin Quarter.
Braith was painting in bed when West burst into the room, looking badly frightened.
“I wish you’d come downstairs. Our house has been smashed up, and I’m afraid some of the looters may decide to visit us tonight.”
Braith jumped out of bed and pulled on a piece of clothing that had once been an overcoat.
“Is anyone hurt?” he asked, struggling to get his arm through a sleeve lined with torn cloth.
“No. Colette is hiding in the cellar, and the concierge ran off to the fortifications. If the shelling continues, there’ll be a rough crowd around here. You could help us—”
“Of course.”
They hurried toward the rue Serpente.
As they turned into the passage leading to West’s cellar, West suddenly stopped.
“Have you seen Jack Trent today?”
“No.”
Braith looked worried.
“He wasn’t at Ambulance Headquarters.”
“He stayed behind to look after Sylvia, I suppose.”
A bomb crashed through the roof of a house at the end of the alley and exploded in the basement. Slate and plaster rained down into the street.
A second shell smashed into a chimney and plunged into a garden beneath an avalanche of bricks.
Another exploded in the next street with a deafening roar.
They hurried down the passage toward the cellar steps.
Braith stopped again.
“Don’t you think I should run up and see whether Jack and Sylvia are safely barricaded in? I can be back before dark.”
“No. Go inside and find Colette. I’ll go.”
“No, no. Let me. There’s no danger.”
“I know.”
West grabbed Braith and pulled him into the alley.
Then he pointed toward the cellar steps.
The iron door was barred.
“Colette! Colette!”
The door swung inward, and the girl rushed up the steps toward them.
At that exact moment, Braith glanced behind him and gave a frightened cry.
He shoved West and Colette into the cellar, jumped in after them, and slammed the iron door.
A few seconds later, a tremendous impact from outside shook the hinges.
“They’re here,” West whispered, his face pale.
“That door will hold,” Colette said calmly.
Braith examined the low iron door as it trembled beneath the blows raining down upon it.
West looked anxiously at Colette.
She showed no fear, and that gave him some courage.
“I don’t think they’ll stay long,” Braith said. “They probably only search cellars for liquor.”
“Unless they’ve heard that valuables are buried here.”
“But surely there aren’t any valuables buried here?”
“Unfortunately, there are,” West growled. “That miserly landlord of mine—”
A tremendous crash outside cut him off, followed by a scream.
Then blow after blow struck the door.
Finally, there was a sharp snap.
Metal clattered.
A triangular piece of iron fell inward, leaving a hole through which a thin ray of light entered.
West immediately dropped to his knees.
He pushed his revolver through the opening and fired every round.
For several seconds, the alley echoed with the gunshots.
Then everything became completely silent.
A moment later, one cautious blow struck the door.
Then another.
Then another.
Suddenly, a crack shot across the iron plate.
“Here!”
West grabbed Colette by the wrist.
“You follow me, Braith!”
He ran toward a small circle of light at the far end of the cellar.
The light came from a barred manhole above.
West crouched down.
“Get on my shoulders.”
Braith climbed onto him.
“Push it open. You must!”
Braith shoved the barred cover upward with little effort.
He crawled out on his stomach, then reached down and easily pulled Colette up from West’s shoulders.
“Quick, old chap!” Braith called.
He wrapped his legs around a chain attached to the fence and leaned down again.
Below them, the cellar was flooded with yellow light.
The air stank of petroleum smoke.
The iron door was still holding, but an entire section of the metal had been torn away.
As they watched, a figure began crawling through the opening, holding a torch.
“Quick!” Braith whispered. “Jump!”
West climbed up and hung from the opening.
Colette grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out.
Only then did her courage collapse.
She began to sob hysterically.
West put an arm around her and led her across the gardens toward the next street.
Braith replaced the manhole cover, then piled stone slabs from the wall over it before rejoining them.
It was almost completely dark.
They hurried through streets illuminated only by burning buildings and the sudden flashes of exploding shells.
They kept well away from the fires.
From a distance, however, they could see looters moving through the ruins.
Sometimes they passed a drunken woman screaming curses at the world.
Sometimes they saw a shambling man whose blackened hands and face revealed that he had taken part in the destruction.
At last they reached the Seine and crossed the bridge.
“I have to go back,” Braith said. “I’m not sure Jack and Sylvia are safe.”
As he spoke, he stepped aside for a crowd crossing the bridge and moving along the river wall beside the d’Orsay barracks.
West suddenly heard the measured footsteps of a platoon.
A lantern passed.
Then came a line of bayonets.
Another lantern appeared, briefly illuminating a deathly pale face behind it.
Colette gasped.
“Hartman!”
Then he was gone.
They stared fearfully across the embankment, barely breathing.
There was a shuffle of feet along the quay.
Then the barracks gate slammed shut.
A lantern appeared briefly at the smaller entrance.
The crowd pressed against the iron grille.
Then came the terrible sound of a volley from the stone parade ground.
One by one, petroleum torches flared along the embankment.
The entire square seemed to come alive.
From the Champs-Élysées and across the Place de la Concorde came scattered remnants of the battle.
A company here.
A mob there.
They poured into the city from every street, followed by women and children.
A great cry rose on the icy wind, sweeping beneath the Arc de Triomphe and down the dark avenue.
“Lost! Lost!”
A ragged fragment of a battalion staggered past them, looking like the ghosts of an army that had already been destroyed.
West groaned.
Then someone suddenly sprang from the shadowy ranks.
“West!”
West turned.
When he recognized Trent, he cried out.
Trent seized him, white with terror.
“Sylvia?”
West could not speak.
Colette moaned.
“Oh, Sylvia! Sylvia! And they’re shelling the Quarter!”
“Trent!” Braith shouted.
But Trent was already gone.
They could not catch him.
By the time Trent crossed Boulevard St. Germain, the bombardment had stopped.
But the entrance to the rue de Seine was blocked by a mountain of smoking bricks.
Everywhere, shells had ripped enormous holes in the pavement.
The café had been reduced to broken glass and splintered wood.
The bookshop was barely standing, torn open from roof to basement.
The little bakery, which had been closed for months, bulged outward over a heap of slate and twisted metal.
Trent climbed over the steaming rubble and hurried into the rue de Tournon.
A fire burned on the corner, throwing light across his street.
Beneath a shattered gas lamp, a child was writing on the wall with a piece of charcoal.
“HERE FELL THE FIRST SHELL.”
The words stared back at Trent.
The little rat-killer finished his work and stepped back to admire it.
Then he saw Trent’s bayonet.
He screamed and ran.
Trent staggered across the ruined street.
From holes and dark corners in the wreckage, furious women fled from their looting, cursing him as they went.
At first, Trent could not even find his own house.
His tears blurred everything.
He felt his way along the wall until he finally reached the door.
A lantern still burned inside the concierge’s lodge.
The old concierge lay dead beside it.
Trent, trembling with fear, leaned against his rifle for a moment.
Then he snatched up the lantern and rushed up the stairs.
He tried to call out.
His tongue could barely move.
On the second floor, plaster covered the stairs.
On the third, the floor had been torn apart, and the concierge lay across the landing in a pool of blood.
Then came the next floor.
His floor.
Their floor.
The door hung from its hinges.
The walls were split wide open.
Trent crept inside.
Then he collapsed beside the bed.
Two arms suddenly wrapped around his neck.
A tear-streaked face pressed against his.
“Sylvia!”
“Oh, Jack! Jack! Jack!”
From the pillow lying beside them came the cry of a baby.
“They brought it,” Sylvia sobbed. “It’s mine.”
“Ours,” he whispered.
He wrapped his arms around them both.
Then Braith’s anxious voice came from the stairs below.
“Trent! Is everything all right?”