usually so grave and circumspect, yielded to the general /furore/, and
printed whatever statements reached it. But the more unscrupulous papers
were the ones to read. The "Voix du Peuple" in particular made use of the
public feverishness to increase its sales. Each morning it employed some
fresh device, and printed some frightful story of a nature to drive
people mad with terror. It related that not a day passed without Baron
Duvillard receiving threatening letters of the coarsest description,
announcing that his wife, his son and his daughter would all be killed,
that he himself would be butchered in turn, and that do what he might his
house would none the less be blown up. And as a measure of precaution the
house was guarded day and night alike by a perfect army of plain-clothes
officers. Then another article contained an amazing piece of invention.
Some anarchists, after carrying barrels of powder into a sewer near the
Madeleine, were said to have undermined the whole district, planning a
perfect volcano there, into which one half of Paris would sink. And at
another time it was alleged that the police were on the track of a
terrible plot which embraced all Europe, from the depths of Russia to the
shores of Spain. The signal for putting it into execution was to be given
in France, and there would be a three days' massacre, with grape shot
sweeping everyone off the Boulevards, and the Seine running red, swollen
by a torrent of blood. Thanks to these able and intelligent devices of
the Press, terror now reigned in the city; frightened foreigners fled
from the hotels /en masse/; and Paris had become a mere mad-house, where
the most idiotic delusions at once found credit.

It was not all this, however, that worried Guillaume. He was only anxious
about Salvat and the various new "scents" which the newspaper reporters
attempted to follow up. The engineer was not yet arrested, and, so far
indeed, there had been no statement in print to indicate that the police
were on his track. At last, however, Pierre one morning read a paragraph