hree days, closed their
doors amid mutterings of a riot. A crowd of fugitives, laden with their
baggage, besieged the railway stations and took the town by storm. Many
who were anxious to lay in a stock of provisions and take refuge in
the cellars, attacked the grocery stores, although they were guarded by
soldiers with fixed bayonets. The public authorities displayed energy.
Numerous arrests were made and thousands of warrants issued against
suspected persons.

During the three weeks that followed no outrage was committed. There was
a rumour that bombs had been found in the Opera House, in the cellars of
the Town Hall, and beside one of the Pillars of the Stock Exchange. But
it was soon known that these were boxes of sweets that had been put in
those places by practical jokers or lunatics. One of the accused, when
questioned by a magistrate, declared that he was the chief author of
the explosions, and said that all his accomplices had lost their
lives. These confessions were published by the newspapers and helped
to reassure public opinion. It was only towards the close of the
examination that the magistrates saw they had to deal with a pretender
who was in no way connected with any of the crimes.

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 cessat