The people, all whose political idea is from the senses, could not at all comprehend why the statesmen of the Assembly should impose upon them a fugitive king, out of respect for abstract royalty.  The moderation of Barnave and Lameth seemed to them full of suspicion; and cries of treason were uttered at all their meetings.  The decree of the Assembly was the signal for increased ferment, which developed from and after the 13th of July, in zealous meetings, imprecations, and threats.  Large bodies of workmen, leaving their work, congregated in the public places, and demanded bread of the municipal authorities.  The commune, in order to appease them, voted for distributions and supplies.  Bailly, the mayor of Paris, harangued them, and gave them extraordinary work.  They went to it for a moment, and then quitted it, being speedily attracted by the mob becoming dense and uttering cries of hunger.

The crowd betook itself from the Hotel-de-Ville to the Jacobins, from the Jacobins to the National Assembly, clamorous for the forfeiture of the crown and the republic.  This popular gathering had no other leader than the uneasiness that excited it.  A spontaneous and unanimous instinct assured it that the Assembly would be found wanting at the hour of great resolutions.  This mob desired to compel it again to seize the opportunity.  Its will was the more potent as it was wholly impossible to trace it to its source—­no chief gave it any visible impetus.  It advanced of itself, spake of itself, and wrote with its own hand in the streets—­on the corner stone—­its threatening petitions.

The first that the people presented to the Assembly, on the 14th, and which was escorted by 4000 petitioners, was signed “The People.”  The 14th of July and the 6th of October had taught it its name.  The Assembly, firm and unmoved, passed to the order of the day.

On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative terms.  “Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you destroy the work we have perfected?  Will you replace liberty by a reign of tyranny?  If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which has acquired its rights, will not again lose them.”

On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries, the Assembly, and the Palais Royal.  Of their own accord they shut up the theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments, until justice should be done to them.  That evening 4000 persons went to the Jacobins, as though to identify in the agitators who met there the real assembly of the people.  The chiefs in whom they reposed confidence were there:  the tribune was occupied by a member who was denouncing to the meeting a citizen for having made a remark injurious to Robespierre; the accused was justifying himself, and they drove him tumultuously from the chamber.  At this moment Robespierre