The stream of fugitives, rich and poor, mingled, poured on without ceasing.  He did not know where they were going.  Most of them did not know themselves.  He saw a great motor, filled high with people and goods, break down in the streets, and he watched them while they worked desperately to restore the mechanism.  And yet there was no panic.  The sound of voices was not high.  The Republic was justifying itself once more.  Silent and somberly defiant, the inhabitants were leaving Paris before the giant German guns could rain shells upon the unarmed.

It was three or four hours until the time to meet Lannes, and drawn by an overwhelming curiosity and anxiety he began the climb of the Butte Montmartre.  If observers on the Eiffel Tower could see the German forces approaching, then with the powerful glasses he carried over his shoulder he might discern them from the dome of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

As he made his way up the ascent through the crooked and narrow little streets he saw many eyes, mostly black and quick, watching him.  This by night was old Paris, dark and dangerous, where the Apache dwelled, and by day in a fleeing city, with none to restrain, he might be no less ruthless.

But John felt only friendliness for them all.  He believed that common danger would knit all Frenchmen together, and he nodded and smiled at the watchers.  More than one pretty Parisian, not of the upper classes, smiled back at the American with the frank and open face.

Before he reached the Basilica a little rat of a young man stepped before him and asked: 

“Which way, Monsieur?”

He was three or four years older than John, wearing uncommonly tight fitting clothes of blue, a red cap with a tassel, and he was about five feet four inches tall.  But small as he was he seemed to be made of steel, and he stood, poised on his little feet, ready to spring like a leopard when he chose.

The blue eyes of the tall American looked steadily into the black eyes of the short Frenchman, and the black eyes looked back as steadily.  John was fast learning to read the hearts and minds of men through their eyes, and what he saw in the dark depths pleased him.  Here were cunning and yet courage; impudence and yet truth; caprice and yet honor.  Apache or not, he decided to like him.

“I’m going up into the lantern of the Basilica,” he said, “to see if I can see the Germans, who are my enemies as well as yours.”

“And will not Monsieur take me, too, and let me have look for look with him through those glasses at the Germans, some of whom I’m going to shoot?”

John smiled.

“If you’re going out potting Germans,” he said, “you’d better get yourself into a uniform as soon as you can.  They have no mercy on franc tireurs.”

“I’ll chance that.  But you’ll take me with you into the dome?”

“What’s your name?”

“Pierre Louis Bougainville.”