CITIZENS, THE NATION IS IN DANGER!
TO ARMS!
"Save Paris! save France! Else, woe is us!" repeated the imploring voices of women, whose cries and moans mingled with the clamor of the alarm bell.
At that moment there advanced, through the crowd which made way for him, a municipal officer bearing a banner, and followed by several drummers beating the charge. They preceded a troop of volunteers of all ages and conditions, singing the Marseillaise, that sacred hymn of the Revolution. At the end of each stanza they waved their pikes, their guns, their sabers, their caps, their hats, crying:
"To arms, brothers! To the Field of Mars! And to-night, off for the frontier!"
The majority of the citizens, who, after reading the decree of the Commune, also cried "To arms!" fell in line with the volunteers. Among them I beheld a man in the prime of life, his face radiant with civic ardor, embrace his wife and little daughters who accompanied him, and, his eyes filled with tears, exclaim—"Adieu! I go to defend you!"
I was still thrilling under the impression produced by this patriotic act, when I heard someone read, in a loud voice, this fragment of a placard, posted, they said, by order of the ministry:
"—Citizens of Paris, you have traitors in your midst. Ah, but for them, the strife would soon be over!"
"Who are the traitors?" the word went 'round. "Who are they, if not the royalists, hidden in the two hundred dens mentioned by Gorsas—if not the priests and the monks?"
"And our fathers, our husbands, our sons, our brothers, are enrolling in mass to run to the frontiers!" cried a woman, in terror. "Who will defend us against the fury of the enemies within?"
"The royalists will let slip upon Paris the counterfeiters and the brigands shut up with them in the prisons!"