All the dwellings were searched, and three thousand persons arrested; two thousand guns were taken.
Terror was needed; they obtained it. The worst mischief from the search was one not foreseen; the mob had entered rich houses, and the sight of luxuries had redoubled their hatred, though not inciting them to pillage. There was so little robbery that Beaumarchais, then in jail, said that the crowd nearly drowned a woman who plucked a rose in his gardens.
On this general search day, the Commune summoned before its bar a Girondist editor, Girey-Dupre, who took refuge at the War Ministry, from not having time to get to the House. Insulted by one of its members, the Girondists summoned the Commune's president, Huguenin, before its bar for having allowed the Ministry to take Girey by force.
Huguenin would not come, and he was ordered to be arrested by main force, while a fresh election for a Commune was decreed.
The present one determined to hold office, and thus was civil war set going. No longer the mob against the king, citizens against aristocrats, the cottage against the castle; but hovels against houses, ward against ward, pike to pike, and mob to mob.
Marat called for the massacre of the Assembly; that was nothing, as people were used to his shrieks for wholesale slaughter. But Robespierre, the prudent, wary, vague, and double-meaning denunciator, came out boldly for all to fly to arms, not merely to defend, but to attack. He must have judged the Commune was very strong to do this.
The physician who might have his fingers on the pulse of France at this period must have felt the circulation run up at every beat.
The Assembly feared the working-men, who had broken in the Tuileries gates and might dash in the Assembly doors. It feared, too, that if it took up arms against the Commune, it would not only be abandoned by the Revolutionists, but be bolstered up by the moderate Royalists. In that case it would be utterly lost.
It was felt that any event, however slight, might lead this disturbance to colossal proportions. The event, related by one of our characters, who has dropped from sight for some time, and who took a share in it, occurred in the Chatelet Prison.