An appeal was lodged with the National Assembly, and Anthoine read a long report to the Assembly upon May 18. This report was strongly in favour of Danton. It was drawn up by a special committee—not partisan in any way—and after examining all the evidence it came to this conclusion against the Châtelet. Nevertheless the House, a great body of nearly a thousand men, to most of whom the name of Danton meant only a loud Radical voice, hesitated. To adopt the report might have irretrievably weakened the Châtelet, and the National Assembly was extremely nervous on the subject of order in Paris. It ended by an adjournment. The report remained in Danton’s favour; he was not arrested, but the affair was unfortunate for him, and threw him back later at a very important occasion, when he might have entered into power peaceably himself and at a peaceable time. But while this business was drawing to its close, during the very months of April and May which saw his partial vindication, another and a far more momentous business was occupying the Cordeliers—a matter in which they directed all their energy towards a legal solution, but in which, unfortunately for the city, they failed. Ever since the days of October—earlier if you will—there had been arising a strong sentiment, to which I have alluded more than once, and which, for lack of a better name, may be called the Moderate reaction in Paris. It is difficult to characterise this complex body of thought in one adjective, and I cannot lengthen a chapter already too prolonged by a detailed examination of its origin and development. Suffice it to say that from the higher bourgeoisie (generally speaking), from those who were in theory almost Republican, but whose lives were passed in the artificial surroundings of wealth, and finally from the important group of the financiers, who of all men most desired practical reform, and who of all men most hated ideals; from these three, supported by many a small shopkeeper or bureaucrat, came a demand, growing in vigour, for a conservative municipal establishment—one that should be limited in its basis, almost aristocratic in quality, and concerned very much with the maintenance of law and order and very little with the idea of municipal self-government. It is a character to be noted in the French people, this timidity of the small proprietor and his reliance upon constituted authority. It is a matter rarely observed, and yet explaining all Parisian history, that this sentiment does not mark off a particular body of men, but, curiously enough, is found in the mind of nearly every Frenchman, existing side by side with another set of feelings which, on occasion, can make them the most arrant idealists in the world.