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the shouts of other voices blaring through the loudspeakers. "The police are with us! Let Frenchmen free their own capital! Revanche tes mutilés, tes deportés, tes fusillés! Debout Citoyens! The hour has struck. We have lived to see the great day." The loud speakers blared on: "The Americans have already reached Versailles! Now they're at the Place de la Concorde!"

  • * *

In ever-expanding radiations, the excited crowds seethed and bubbled, overflowing the streets. The blood did not circulate, but stormed through the veins with overpowering energy. The steam accumulated through months of repression burst through the air, in spurt after spurt of tremendous power. The crowds surged forward, trampling some of their numbers underfoot and not even stopping to take a back- ward glance at the fallen victims, pushing each other like wild fowl in time of mating. The crowds were a storm-lashed sea, unmindful of its waves, driving irresistibly towards its great Revenge. Then the waves broke loose from the ocean, furious with the desire for private vengeance.

Every street fighter was obsessed by a single thought: to find his Nazi and settle his own score. They streamed through the city, overrunning stockpiles of ammunition and warehouses of foodstuffs.

And the cornered Nazis, like yellow dogs, huddled behind hastily raised white flags, lifted their arms high and pleaded sanctimoniously for justice.

British planes darted through the skies, swooping and diving like playful porpoises, mirroring themselves in the slaughter below and then disappearing in the distance. Over the heads of the turbulent multitudes the sun blazed with

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