ce back to
the Palace. Clear them away from the cannon first, and keep them away
from it. I will be waiting in the street below. When you have driven
them back, we will charge the gates and have it out with them in the
gardens. The Third and Fourth regiments ought to take them in the rear
about the same time. You will continue to pick them off from the roof."

The two supporting columns had already started on their roundabout way
to the rear of the Palace. Clay gathered up his reins, and telling his
men to keep close to the walls, started forward, his soldiers following
on the sidewalks and leaving the middle of the street clear. As they
reached a point a hundred yards below the Palace, a part of the wooden
shield behind the fence was thrown down, there was a puff of white
smoke and a report, and a cannon-ball struck the roof of a house which
they were passing and sent the tiles clattering about their heads. But
the men in the lead had already reached the stage-door of the theatre
and were opposite one of the doors to the club. They drove these in
with the butts of their rifles, and raced up the stairs of each of the
deserted buildings until they reached the roof. Langham was swept by a
weight of men across a stage, and jumped among the music racks in the
orchestra. He caught a glimpse of the early morning sun shining on the
tawdry hangings of the boxes and the exaggerated perspective of the
scenery. He ran through corridors between two great statues of Comedy
and Tragedy, and up a marble stair case to a lobby in which he saw the
white faces about him multiplied in long mirrors, and so out to an iron
balcony from which he looked down, panting and breathless, upon the
Palace Gardens, swarming with soldiers and white with smoke. Men
poured through the windows of the club opposite, dragging sofas and
chairs out to the balcony and upon the flat roof. The men near him
were tearing down the yellow silk curtains in the lobby and draping
them along the railing of the balcony to better conceal their movements
from the enemy below. Bullets spattered the stucco about their heads,
and panes of glass broke suddenly and fell in glittering particles upon
their shoulders. The firing had already begun from the roofs near
them. Beyond the club and the theatre and far along the street on each
side of the Palace the merchants were slamming the iron shutters of
their shops, and men and women were running for refuge up the hi