In the Rue Castiglione, which separated the two hotels, and in full sight of these critical onlookers, a horse was taken with the blind staggers, and upset a stand, throwing those who sat upon it out into the street. In an instant the crash of the falling timbers and the cries of the half-dozen men and women who had been precipitated into the street struck panic into the crowd of sight-seers on the pavement and among the firemen who were at that moment marching past. The terror of another dynamite outrage was in the minds of all, and without waiting to learn what had happened, or to even look, the thousands of people broke into a confused mass of screaming, terrified creatures, running madly in every direction, and changing the quiet solemnity of the moment into a scene of horror and panic. The firemen dropped the wreath they were carrying and fled with the crowd; and then the French soldiers who were lining the pavements, to the astonishment and disgust of the Americans and English on the balconies, who were looking down like spectators at a play, tucked their guns under their arms and joined in the mad rush for safety. It was a sight that made even the women on the balconies keep silence in shame for them. It was pathetic, ridiculous, and inexcusable, and the boy officers on duty would have gained the sympathy of the unwilling spectators had they cut their men down with their swords, and shown the others that he who runs away from a falling grandstand is not needed to live to fight a German army later. It is true that the men who ran away were only boys fresh from the provinces, with dull minds filled with the fear of what an anarchist might do; but it showed a lack of discipline that should have made the directors of the Salon turn the military pictures in that gallery to the wall, until the picture exhibited in the Rue Castiglione was effaced from the minds of the visiting strangers. Imagine a squad of New York policemen running away from a horse with the blind staggers, and not, on the contrary, seizing the chance to club every one within reach back to the sidewalk! Remember the London bobby who carried a dynamite bomb in his hand from the hall of the Houses of Parliament, and the Chicago police who walked into a real anarchist mob over the bodies of their comrades, and who answered the terrifying bombs with the popping of their revolvers! It is surprising that Napoleon, looking down upon the scene in the Rue Castiglione from the top of his column, did not turn on his pedestal.