When midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gates of Paris were still choked with fragments of what had once been an army.
They entered with the night, a sullen horde, spattered with slime, faint with hunger and exhaustion. There was little disorder at first, and the throng at the gates parted silently as the troops tramped along the freezing streets. Confusion came as the hours passed. Swiftly and more swiftly, crowding squadron after squadron and battery on battery, horses plunging and caissons jolting, the remnants from the front surged through the gates, a chaos of cavalry and artillery struggling for the right of way. Close upon them stumbled the infantry; here a skeleton of a regiment marching with a desperate attempt at order, there a riotous mob of Mobiles crushing their way to the streets, then a turmoil of horsemen, cannon, troops without officers, officers without men, then again a line of ambulances, the wheels groaning under their heavy loads.
Dumb with misery the crowd looked on.
All through the day the ambulances had been arriving, and all day long the ragged throng whimpered and shivered by the barriers. At noon the crowd was increased tenfold, filling the squares about the gates, and swarming over the inner fortifications.
At four o’clock in the afternoon the German batteries suddenly wreathed themselves in smoke, and the shells fell fast on Montparnasse. At twenty minutes after four two projectiles struck a house in the Rue de Bac, and a moment later the first shell fell in the Latin Quarter.
Braith was painting in bed when West came in very much scared.