Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/132

 During the afternoon, while the combat was taking place at the bridge of Neuilly, all the space between the Arc de Triomphe to within a short distance of the Maillot gate was filled with a crowd of men, women, and children, probably ten thousand people, all looking at the fight with the greatest anxiety. Telescopes, field-glasses, tables, chairs, and benches, were for hire, as for fireworks, or at public fêtes. The gratification of this feeling of curiosity was not, however, accomplished without some risk. During the afternoon a shell burst in the Avenue de la Grande Armée, which caused a considerable scattering of the crowd, but they all returned. Another burst within three hundred yards of the Arc de Triomphe, and prudent persons were thinking it advisable to leave, when suddenly an immense obus came screeching through the air, and passing five feet above the heads of the immense mass, exploded with a fearful noise on the Arc de Triomphe. Five feet lower, and there would have been five hundred victims. One-half of the crowd fell on their faces, another portion fell long after the explosion, when all danger was over, and the remainder made a rush for the side-streets. Men on horseback, cabs, and carts, public and private conveyances, every thing that was left standing, started over the fallen masses, and in an instant sabots, canes, umbrellas, and cloaks were the only things visible on the avenue. The Prussian bombardment had taught the Parisians that the danger from shells is lessened three-quarters by falling on the face as a shell arrives; but many forget until all danger is over, and then it appears most ridiculous to see them drop. The experience is one of which it is to be hoped few readers will ever be compelled to avail themselves. A battery placed at two and a half miles distant, as was Valérien from the Arc de Triomphe, may be seen to fire some twenty seconds before the sound arrives, and there is an interim of four