The Committee, pushing forward,[99] ordered Brunel to seize the mairies of the first and second arrondissements. Brunel, with 600 men of Belleville, two pieces of artillery, and accompanied by two delegates of the Committee, Lisbonne and Protot, presented himself at three o'clock at the mairie of the Louvre. The bourgeois companies assumed an air of resistance. Brunel had his cannon advanced, when the passage was at once opened to him. He declared to the adjuncts, Meline and Ad. Adam, that the Committee would proceed with the elections as soon as possible. The adjuncts, intimidated, sent to the mairie of the second arrondissement to ask for the authorisation to treat. Dubail answered that they might promise the elections for the 3rd April. Brunel insisted on appointing the 30th March. The adjuncts acquiesced. The National Guards of the two camps saluted this agreement with enthusiastic acclamations, and mingling their ranks, marched to the mairie of the second arrondissement. In the Rue Montmartre a few companies of the Bourse army, trying to stop the way, were told, "Peace is made," and they let them pass. At the mairie of the second arrondissement, Schoelcher, who presided at the meeting of the mayors, Dubail, and Vautrain resisted, refusing to ratify the convention, insisting on the date of the 3rd April. But the great majority of their colleagues accepted that of the 30th, and the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard for the 3rd April. Immense cheers hailed the good news, and the popular battalions, saluted by the bourgeois battalions, defiled through the Rue Vivienne and the boulevards, dragging along their cannon, mounted by lads with green branches in their hands. The Central Committee could not accept this transaction. Twice it had postponed the elections. A new adjournment would have given certain mayors five days for plotting and playing into the hands of Versailles. Besides, the Federal battalions, on foot since the 18th, were really tired out. Ranvier and Arnold the same evening went to the mairie of the second arrondissement to say that the Hotel-de-Ville adhered to the date of the 26th for the elections. The mayors and adjuncts, many of whom had only the one purpose, as they have avowed since,[100] of gaining time, inveighed against a breach of faith. The delegates protested, for Brunel had had no mandate but that of occupying the mairies. For several hours everything was tried to talk over the delegates, but they held their ground, and went away at two o'clock in the morning without any conclusion being arrived at. After their departure the more intractable discussed the chance of resistance. The irrepressible Dubail wrote a call to arms, sent it to the printing-office, and spent the whole night with his faithful Heligon in transmitting orders to the chiefs of battalions and providing the mairie with mitrailleuses.