midnight
Then there came a light like that of a million suns ... . Alas for the wives and children of the herdsmen ! And alas for the herds ! But better that the eight core bombs projected by `` Thanatos '' through the midnight sky toward Paris should have torn the foliage of the Bois , destroyed the grandstands of Auteuil and Longchamps , with sixteen hundred innocent sheep and cattle , than that they should have sought their victims among the crowded streets of the inner city . Lucky for Paris that the Relay Gun had been sighted so as to sweep the metropolis from the west to the east , and that though each shell approached nearer to the walls than its preceding brother , none reached the ramparts . For with the discharge of the eighth shell and the explosion of the first core bomb filled with lyddite among the sleeping animals huddled on the turf in front of the grandstands , something happened which the poor shepherds did not see . The watchers in the Eiffel Tower , seeing the heavens with their searchlights for German planes and German dirigibles , saw the first core bomb bore through the sky from the direction of Verdun , followed by its seven comrades , and saw each bomb explode in the Bois below .