The experts chosen by the courts discovered nothing that enabled them to determine the engine employed in the work of destruction.  According to their conjectures the new explosive emanated from a gas which radium evolves, and it was supposed that electric waves, produced by a special type of oscillator, were propagated through space and thus caused the explosion.  But even the ablest chemist could say nothing precise or certain.  At last two policemen, who were passing in front of the Hotel Meyer, found on the pavement, close to a ventilator, an egg made of white metal and provided with a capsule at each end.  They picked it up carefully, and, on the orders of their chief, carried it to the municipal laboratory.  Scarcely had the experts assembled to examine it, than the egg burst and blew up the amphitheatre and the dome.  All the experts perished, and with them Collin, the General of Artillery, and the famous Professor Tigre.

The capitalist society did not allow itself to be daunted by this fresh disaster.  The great banks re-opened their doors, declaring that they would meet demands partly in bullion and partly in paper money guaranteed by the State:  The Stock Exchange and the Trade Exchange, in spite of the complete cessation of business, decided not to suspend their sittings.

In the mean time the magisterial investigation into the case of those who had been first accused had come to an end.  Perhaps the evidence brought against them might have appeared insufficient under other circumstances, but the zeal both of the magistrates and the public made up for this insufficiency.  On the eve of the day fixed for the trial the Courts of justice were blown up and eight hundred people were killed, the greater number of them being judges and lawyers.  A furious crowd broke into the prison and lynched the prisoners.  The troops sent to restore order were received with showers of stones and revolver shots; several soldiers being dragged from their horses and trampled underfoot.  The soldiers fired on the mob and many persons were killed.  At last the public authorities succeeded in establishing tranquillity.  Next day the Bank was blown up.

From that time onwards unheard-of things took place.  The factory workers, who had refused to strike, rushed in crowds into the town and set fire to the houses.  Entire regiments, led by their officers, joined the workmen, went with them through the town singing revolutionary hymns, and took barrels of petroleum from the docks with which to feed the fires.  Explosions were continual.  One morning a monstrous tree of smoke, like the ghost of a huge palm tree half a mile in height, rose above the giant Telegraph Hall which suddenly fell into a complete ruin.