"Any news?" asked he.
"Nothing, except that day is breaking and the sky is the color of blood."
[CHAPTER XI.]
IN THE MORNING.
The early sunbeams shone on two horsemen riding at a walking pace along the deserted water-side by the Tuileries. They were Colonel Mandat and his aid.
At one A. M. he was summoned to the City Hall, and refused to go; but on the order being renewed more peremptorily at two, Attorney Roederer said to him:
"Mark, colonel, that under the law the commander of the National Guard is to obey the City Government."
He decided to go, ignorant of two things.
In the first place, forty-seven sections of the forty-eight had joined to the town rulers each three commissioners, with orders to work with the officials and "save the country." Mandat expected to see the old board as before, and not at all to behold a hundred and forty-one fresh faces. Again, he had no idea of the order from this same board to clear the New Bridge of cannon and vacate St. John's Arcade, an order so important that Danton and Manuel personally had superintended its execution.