Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/305

"Liberation!" Anna continued the cry, the loudspeaker flinging the word like a bolt of thunder.

A broad-hipped market woman picked up a handful of the scattered sheets. She hid them under the folds of her black apron and hurried on, forgetting her basket of half-withered flowers on the sidewalk. Scattering the leaflets in the air, she cried with a frenzied voice, "Liberation!"

A little man, looking like a scarecrow in his oversized coat, burst into an hysterical shriek of laughter and threw his stiff brimmed hat into the air. It fell in the gutter and rolled away. He waved his flapping arms; the sun mirrored itself on his bald pate. "Revolt!" he yelled, and began to dance madly up and down the Place Republique. "Death to the tyrant! Freedom for Paris!" It was like a chain reaction that follows an atomic explosion; the whole earth seemed to shake and quiver beneath the ever-widening waves of the onrushing masses!

Barefoot street urchins, with dirty faces and hair that stood up like the quills of a porcupine, came running from all directions.

"Death to the Boche! La mort! La mort!" From hundreds of throats the cry came. "The other side of the Seine is already liberated! The isle of La Cité has revolted!"

"Arise, citizens! Arise!" blared the loudspeaker on the sound truck cruising through the avenues and streets.

"De la merde!" growled an old man angrily, clinging to a gun that a youngster sought to grab. "I've fought two wars and I'm still good enough to fight." Grunting his displeasure, he elbowed his way through the crowd.

"Hand grenades over here! Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. . . to the Place de la Concorde, comrades! Shoot them like mice! Don't bother about prisoners. We've gorged them long enough!" It was Anna's voice again mingled with