Pale and quavering one of the officers spoke: "The alarm bell sounds in Paris! The ferment is at its height! Everywhere the Sections are gathering in arms. Several of our colleagues, sent to the City Hall to learn how matters stood, have been arrested. The insurgents are preparing to march at daybreak upon the Tuileries."
"An act of high justice!" cried one of the members of the Left. "Within the Tuileries' walls resides the bitterest enemy of the public good! He must be annihilated by the sovereign people!"
The words were greeted with enthusiastic applause from the galleries; in the midst of which a hussar hurriedly approached the chair and delivered a letter to the president. The latter read it, and touched his bell as a signal for silence. When the cries of the gallery had partially subsided, he said:
"Gentlemen, I am advised by the police officials that every minute messengers come from the Sections asking for Monsieur Petion at the City Hall, assuring them that the rumor has spread that he went to-night to the palace, and that he runs great danger of death; it is feared the royalists may assassinate him."
At these words the uneasiness and agitation of the galleries was extreme. The patriotism, the courage of Petion, his boundless devotion to the Revolution, had made him dear to the people.
At this moment Petion himself entered the hall and advanced to the bar. Thus reassured on the score of the dangers run at the Tuileries by the Mayor of Paris, the galleries broke into loud acclamations.
"Monsieur Petion," the president said, "the Assembly has been keenly anxious for your safety. It would be pleased to receive your account of the dangers to which it is said you were exposed."
Petion answered, calm and grave: "Occupied solely with public affairs, I quickly forget what affects my own person. It is true that to-night, on my arrival at the palace, I was quite illy greeted. Swords leaped from their scabbards, and I heard threats uttered against me. These did not disconcert me—"
The first rays of the sun were beginning to dim the lamps which lighted the hall; nearly all the Representatives of the people were assembled in their accustomed places. The Right seemed thrown into consternation by Petion's calmness.
Of a sudden a deputy came tumbling into the hall, rushed to his seat on the Right, and, his features distorted, his clothes in disorder, he cried in a voice trembling with emotion: