It was, therefore, proposed that one or two others
should be stationed along the route of the procession with bombs ready
if Simard failed. This I strenuously opposed, and guaranteed that
Simard would be ready to launch his missile. I met with little
difficulty in persuading the company to agree, because, after all,
every man among them feared he might be one of those selected, which
choice was practically a sentence of death. I guaranteed that the bomb
would be thrown, and this apparently was taken to mean that if Simard
did not do the deed, I would.
This danger over, I next took the measurements, and estimated the
weight, of the picric bomb. I then sought out a most amiable and
expert pyrotechnist, a capable workman of genius, who with his own
hand makes those dramatic firework arrangements which you sometimes
see in Paris. As Eugene Valmont, I had rendered a great service to
this man, and he was not likely to have forgotten it. During one of
the anarchist scares a stupid policeman had arrested him, and when I
intervened the man was just on the verge of being committed for life.
France trembled in one of her panics, or, rather, Paris did, and
demanded victims. This blameless little workman had indeed contributed
with both material and advice, but any fool might have seen that he
had done this innocently.
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