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 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 279 martre appeared to acquiesce in all that the sol- chap. diery did.* !_ The impulse which had thus come upon the soldiery near the head of the column was a motive akin to panic, for it was carried by swift conta- gion from man to man till it ran westward from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle into the Boulevard Poissoniere, and gained the Boulevard Mont- martre, and ran swiftly through its whole length, and entered the Boulevard des Italiens. Thus by a movement in the nature of that which tacticians describe as ' conversion/ a column of some sixteen thousand men facing eastward towards St Denis was suddenly formed, as it were, into an order of battle fronting southward, and busily firing into the crowd which lined the foot - pavement, and upon the men, women, and children who stood at the balconies and windows on that side of the Boulevard.t "What made the fire at the houses the more deadly was that, even after it had be- gun at the eastern part of the Boulevard Mont- martre, people standing at the balconies and windows farther west could not see or believe that the troops were really firing in at the win- dows with ball-cartridge, and they remained in the front rooms, and even continued standing at the windows, until a volley came crashing in. At one of the windows there stood a young Bussian noble with his sister at his side. Sud- denly they received the fire of the soldiery, and both of them were wounded with musket-shot*.
 * Captaiu Jesse, ubi post, t Ibid.