Danton affirmed that the writ was illegal, offered to prove it, and led the officers of the Châtelet to the hall of the district. There he had the new procedure read to them, compared it with the date of their warrant, and so confused the minds of those simple men that they signed a _procès-verbal_ which declared that, after hearing such reasons, they doubted how they should act. They came back escorted by Fabre d’Eglantine through an angry crowd, and were received by the officers of the National Guard with some heat. They stood firm, however, and refused to pursue the arrest until they could consult with those who sent them, and finally the difficulty was removed by Danton’s promising to appeal to the National Assembly and to abide by its decision. The terms were accepted, the sentries left Marat’s door, and the troops withdrew. All this debate and turmoil had taken up the morning and the luncheon-hour, the Rue des Fossés St. Germains was evacuated in the early afternoon, and by four o’clock of that day, 22nd of January 1790, Danton and his companions were pleading their cause at the bar of the House. It was the old policy of resorting to the National Assembly as the last place of appeal, and of using this principal result of the Revolutionary movement as a weapon against the Parisian Moderates. The Assembly found itself in the old dilemma, and adopted the old compromise. By its theory it was democratic; all its phrases and many of its decrees were based on the “Contrat Social,” but by its personnel and its connections it was naturally allied to the high professional class, to the Baillys and the Lafayettes. It instructed Target (the President of the fortnight) to write to the district; he condemned the attitude of the Cordeliers, but Parliament “relied upon their patriotism to execute the will of the Assembly.” The district, true to its policy, at once submitted. They sent Legendre and Testulat to tell the commander of the forces (who had re-entered the Rue des Fossés) that they had no longer the right to prevent the arrest; whereupon he sent in the police and awaited Marat in the street below. The house was empty, and Marat was on his way to England, a country with which he was not unfamiliar, and the vices of whose constitution had already furnished a theme for his too facile pen.