A thousandfold echo answered, "Vive la Commune!" Caps were flung up on the ends of bayonets, flags fluttered in the air. From the windows, on the roofs, thousands of hands waved handkerchiefs. The quick reports of the cannon, the bands, the drums, blended in one formidable vibration. All hearts leaped with joy, all eyes filled with tears. Never since the great Federation had Paris been thus moved. The filing off was very cleverly managed by Brunel, who, while having the place evacuated on the one hand, brought in those battalions that were without, all equally anxious to acclaim the Commune. Before the bust of the Republic the flags were lowered, the officers saluted with their sabres, the men raised their muskets. Not until seven o'clock did the last procession pass by. The agents of M. Thiers returned in dismay to tell him, "It was really the whole of Paris that took part in the manifestation." And the Central Committee might well exclaim in its enthusiasm, "To-day Paris opened a fresh page in the book of history, and there inscribed her powerful name. Let the spies of Versailles, who are prowling around us, go and tell their masters what the common movement of an entire population means. Let these spies carry back to them the image of the magnificent spectacle of a people recovering their sovereignty." This lightning would have made the blind to see. 287,000 voters, 200,000 men with the same watchword. This was not a secret committee, a handful of factious rioters and bandits, as had been said for ten days. Here was an immense force at the service of a definite idea--Communal independence, the intellectual life of France--an invaluable force in this time of universal anaemia, a godsend as precious as the compass saved from the wreck and saving the survivors. This was one of those great historical turning-points when a people may be remoulded. Liberals, if it was in good faith that you called for decentralisation under the Empire; Republicans, if you have understood June, 1848, and December, 1851; Radicals, if you really want the self-government of the people, listen to this new voice, avail yourselves of this marvellous opportunity. But the Prussian! What does it matter? Why not forge arms under the eye of the enemy? Bourgeois, was it not in sight of the foreigner that your ancestor Etienne Marcel tried to remake France? And your Convention, did not it first act in the very midst of the hurricane? What did they answer? Death to Paris! The red sun of civil discord melts veneer and all masks. There they are side by side as in 1791, 1794, and 1848, Monarchists, Clericals, Liberals, Radicals, all of them, their hands raised against the people--one army in different uniforms. Their decentralisation is rural and capitalist federalism; their self-government, the exploitation of the budget by themselves, just as the whole political science of their statesmen consists only in massacre and the state of siege.