up in the sky, invisible.  Lights were searching for it now.  Great rays, like immense white arms, stretched across the sky, trying to catch that flying thing.  They crossed each other, flying backwards and forwards, travelled softly and cautiously across the dark vault as though groping through every inch of it for that invisible danger.  The sound of guns shocked into the silence, with dull reports.  From somewhere in Paris a flame shot up, revealing in a quick flash groups of shadow figures at open windows and on flat roofs.

“Look!” said the man who had a view across the Boulevard St. Germain.

The woman drew a deep breath.

“Yes, there is one of them! ...  And another! ...  How fast they travel!”

There was a black smudge in the sky, blacker than the darkness.  It moved at a great rate, and the loud vibrations followed it.  For a moment or two, touched by one of the long rays of light it was revealed—­a death-ship, white from stem to stern and crossing the sky like a streak of lightning.  It went into the darkness again and its passage could only be seen now by some little flames which seemed to fall from it.  They went out like French matches, sputtering before they died.

In all parts of Paris there were thousands of people watching the apparition in the sky.  On the heights of the Sacre Coeur inhabitants of Montmartre gathered and thrilled to the flashing of the searchlights and the bursting of shrapnel.

The bugle-calls bidding everybody stay indoors had brought Paris out of bed and out of doors.  The most bad-tempered people in the city were those who had slept through the alerte, and in the morning received the news with an incredulous “Quoi?  Non, ce n’est pas possible!  Les Zeppelins sont venus?  Je n’ai pas entendu le moindre bruit!”

Some houses were smashed in the outer suburbs.  A few people had been wounded in their beds.  Unexploded bombs were found in gardens and rubbish heaps.  After all, the Zeppelin raid had been a grotesque failure in the fine art of murder, and the casualty list was so light that Paris jeered at the death-ships which had come in the night.  Count Zeppelin was still the same old blagueur.  His precious airships were ridiculous.

A note of criticism crept into the newspapers and escaped the censor.  Where were the French aviators who had sworn to guard Paris from such a raid?  There were unpleasant rumours that these adventurous young gentlemen had taken the night off with the ladies of their hearts.  It was stated that the telephone operator who ought to have sent the warning to them was also making la bombe, or sleeping away from his post.  It was beyond a doubt that certain well-known aviators had been seen in Paris restaurants until closing time...  Criticism was killed by an official denial from General Galieni, who defended those young gentlemen under his orders, and affirmed that each man was at the post of duty.  It was a denial which caused the scandalmongers to smile as inscrutably as Mona Lisa.