"Tranquil, indeed!" cried Ledru Rollin. "That's exactly what we have apprehended! No--no--it is too late! This Reform Banquet was, at first, but an insignificant thing. In it we now recognize the commencement of a revolution. The various announcements and postponements of this banquet have caused an agitation among the masses favorable to our wishes, and the threats and obstinacy of the Ministry have completed the work. The hopes, fears, doubts and disappointments attending this affair have put the mind of all Paris in a ferment, and excited passions of which we may take immediate advantage." "Aye!" cried Louis Blanc, "we may now do what I have always wished and counseled--we, the Communists, may now take advantage of a movement, in the origin or inception of which we had no hand." "True, most true!" observed Marrast; "this is the work of the Dynastics--Thiers, Barrot and the rest--the commencement of a reform under the law which we design to make a revolution paramount to all law." "They begin to fear already that they have gone too far, those discreet men!" said Louis Blanc, smiling bitterly. "Did you observe how they shuffled to-night at M. Barrot's, and finally resolved to abandon the banquet, but, as a sop to the people, pledged themselves to impeach the Ministry?" "Ah! ha! ha!" laughed Ledru Rollin; "just as if their abandonment of the banquet is to keep the people away from it to-morrow, any more than the Ministerial ordinances! Why, not one man in ten thousand knows of the existence of these manifestoes! But the faubourgs have been promised a holiday for a fortnight past, and they don't intend to be put off again." "Whether the Dynastics designed or wished to be compromised in this affair," remarked Marrast, "they certainly are committed now, and it is too late for them to get out of the movement. Indeed, I view it as nothing less than a union of all the oppositions against the Crown--aye, against the Crown, and for a republic! We comprehend this--they don't. They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for revolution;--and now, before God, I believe the hour is at hand! This is no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32--no outbreak at a funeral--no riot of operatives--no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure the National Guard."