All started for the Hotel de Ville. They had but to keep on the quays; but the distance was rather a lengthy one; but as the refusal of the Mayor might spoil all, and as I wished to give a report to M. Duplay, I went with the others to the Hotel de Ville.
M. Bailly was not there; he was at the Place Vendome, watching the proceedings of the Assembly; but they found his substitute, told him of the matter, found him not unwilling, and demanded a written authorization. He said he did not see the necessity—a verbal permission being quite sufficient; that the people were always legal, exercising only their right of petition.
I returned to M. Duplay’s, telling him that the petition would be signed to-morrow, and that the signature would be approved of by Bailly, or, at least, by his substitute.
We were ignorant of what was going on in the Assembly.
The Assembly had learnt the decision taken by the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. It would not do to allow the people to take this supremacy upon itself. They appealed to Bailly and the municipal council.
At ten o’clock, Bailly and his council decided that on the morrow, Sunday, 17th July, the decree of the Assembly, hearing “that the suppression of executive power should last until the Constitutional Act had been presented to, and accepted by, the King,” should be fixed at eight o’clock punctually, and that proclamation of the decree should be with sound of trumpet proclaimed by the huissiers of the city.
Therefore, whoever did not recognise an act proceeding from the National Assembly—that is to say, the people’s representatives—should be rebels to the law, and should be treated as such.
