Consequently, on reaching the Pont Neuf, Mandat was stupefied to find it utterly deserted. He stopped and sent his aid to scout. In ten minutes this officer returned with the word that he saw no guns or National Guards, while the neighborhood was as lonesome as the bridge.
Mandat continued his way, though he perhaps ought to have gone back to the palace; but men, like things, must wend whither their destiny impels.
Proportionably to his approach to the City Hall, he seemed to enter into liveliness. In the same way as the blood in some organizations leaves the extremities cold and pale on rushing back to fortify the heart, so all the movement and heat—the Revolution, in short—was around the City Hall, the seat of popular life, the heart of that great body, Paris.
He stopped to send his officer to the Arcade; but the National Guard had been withdrawn from there, too. He wanted to retrace his steps; but the crowd had packed in behind him, and he was carried, like a waif on the wave, up the Hall steps.
"Stay here," he said to his follower, "and if evil befalls me, run and tell them at the palace."
Mandat yielded to the mob, and was floated into the grand hall, where he met strange and stern faces. It was the insurrection complete, demanding an account of the conduct of this man, who had not only tried to crush it in its development, but to strangle it in its birth.
One of the members of the Commune, the dread body which was to stifle the Assembly and struggle with the Convention, advanced and in the general's name asked:
"By whose order did you double the palace guard?"
"The Mayor of Paris'."
"Show that order."