The month of August may be taken as the time when Danton had to be most careful if he desired to preserve his place and to avoid a fall into violence and unreason. It was the 2nd of that month (as we have said) that saw Bailly’s election, the 5th that gave Danton a personal shock, for on that date he received, for an office which he really coveted and for which he was a candidate, but 193 votes out of over 3000 present. From that moment he devotes all his energy to reconstruction. The first evidence of his new attitude appears with the early days of September. Already the old meeting of the Cordeliers had been changed into the club, and already his influence was gaining ground again in the debates and in the local battalion of the National Guard, when the news of Nancy came to Paris. A conflict between the National Guard and the people, an example of that with which Lafayette continually menaced Paris—the conflict of the armed bourgeoisie and the artisans, or rather of the militia used as a professional army against the people—this had happened at last. It was an occasion for raving. Marat raved loudly, and the royalists gave vent to not a little complacent raving on their side. In the great question whether the army was to be democratic or not, whether reaction was to possess its old disciplined arm, it would seem that reaction had won, and France had seen a little rehearsal of what in ten months was to produce the 17th of July. In such conditions the attitude of the Cordeliers was of real importance. During all Lafayette’s attempt to centralise the militia of Paris this battalion had remained independent; its attitude during the days of October, its defence of Marat in January, had proved this. The crisis appeared to demand from this revolutionary body a strong protest against the use of the militia as an army to be aimed against the people. Such a protest might have been the cause of an outbreak in Paris. Under these circumstances Danton—by what arguments we cannot tell (for the whole affair is only known to us by a few lines of Desmoulins)—obtained from his battalion a carefully-worded pronouncement. “For all the high opinion we have of the National Guards who took part in the affair of Nancy, we can express no other sentiment than regret for what has happened.”[76] It was moderate to the degree of the common-place, but it saved Danton from the abyss and from the street. There followed another check in which he showed once more his power of self-control. The “Notables”—corresponding something to the aldermen of our new municipal scheme in England—were to be elected for Paris a little after the elections for the mayor and for the governor of the Commune. Each Section was to elect three, and Danton had so far regained his influence at home as to be elected for the Théâtre Français.