Bands of bill-stickers, bribed for the occasion, started in every direction, carrying with them the decrees and proclamations.

This was precisely the hour at which the Palace of the National Assembly was invested.  In the Rue de l’Universite there is a door of the Palace which is the old entrance to the Palais Bourbon, and which opened into the avenue which leads to the house of the President of the Assembly.  This door, termed the Presidency door, was according to custom guarded by a sentry.  For some time past the Adjutant-Major, who had been twice sent for during the night by Colonel Espinasse, had remained motionless and silent, close by the sentinel.  Five minutes after, having left the huts of the Invalides, the 42d Regiment of the line, followed at some distance by the 6th Regiment, which had marched by the Rue de Bourgogne, emerged from the Rue de l’Universite.  “The regiment,” says an eye-witness, “marched as one steps in a sickroom.”  It arrived with a stealthy step before the Presidency door.  This ambuscade came to surprise the law.

The sentry, seeing these soldiers arrive, halted, but at the moment when he was going to challenge them with a qui-vive, the Adjutant-Major seized his arm, and, in his capacity as the officer empowered to countermand all instructions, ordered him to give free passage to the 42d, and at the same time commanded the amazed porter to open the door.  The door turned upon its hinges, the soldiers spread themselves through the avenue.  Persigny entered and said, “It is done.”

The National Assembly was invaded.

At the noise of the footsteps the Commandant Mennier ran up.  “Commandant,” Colonel Espinasse cried out to him, “I come to relieve your battalion.”  The Commandant turned pale for a moment, and his eyes remained fixed on the ground.  Then suddenly he put his hands to his shoulders, and tore off his epaulets, he drew his sword, broke it across his knee, threw the two fragments on the pavement, and, trembling with rage, exclaimed with a solemn voice, “Colonel, you disgrace the number of your regiment.”

“All right, all right,” said Espinasse.

The Presidency door was left open, but all the other entrances remained closed.  All the guards were relieved, all the sentinels changed, and the battalion of the night guard was sent back to the camp of the Invalides, the soldiers piled their arms in the avenue, and in the Cour d’Honneur.  The 42d, in profound silence, occupied the doors outside and inside, the courtyard, the reception-rooms, the galleries, the corridors, the passages, while every one slept in the Palace.

Shortly afterwards arrived two of those little chariots which are called “forty sons,” and two fiacres, escorted by two detachments of the Republican Guard and of the Chasseurs de Vincennes, and by several squads of police.  The Commissaries Bertoglio and Primorin alighted from the two chariots.