The Assembly, thus brought back to a sense of its duty, resolved into a secret committee, thoroughly discussing the Committee of Public Safety. What had it done for a week past? Installed the Central Committee at the War Office, increased the disorder, sustained two disasters. Its members lost themselves in details or else did amateur service. One deserted the Hotel-de-Ville to go and shut himself up in a fort; if at least it had been that of Issy or of Vanves! Felix Pyat passed the greater part of his time in the office of the _Vengeur_, there venting his spleen in long-winded articles. A member of the Committee of Public Safety endeavoured to defend it by pleading the vagueness of its attributes. He was answered that Article 3 of the decree gave the Committee full powers over all the Commissions. Finally, after many hours, they decided to renew the Committee at once; to appoint a civil delegate to the War Office; to draw up a proclamation; to meet, save in cases of emergency, only three times a week; to establish the new Committee permanently at the Hotel-de-Ville, while the other members of the Council were to stay regularly in their respective arrondissements. Delescluze was named Delegate at War. In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a second meeting for the nomination of the new Committee. The majority voted Felix Pyat, quite exasperated at the attacks of the afternoon, to the chair. He opened the sitting by demanding the arrest of Rossel. Cleverly grouping together appearances which seemed proofs to the suspicious, he made Rossel the scapegoat of the faults of the Committee, turning the anger of the Council against him. For half an hour he disparaged the absent man, whom he would not have dared attack to his face. "I told you, citizens, that he was a traitor. You would not believe me. You are young; you did not, like our paragons of the Convention, know how to mistrust military power." This reminiscence ravished the Romanticists. They had but one dream--to be Conventionnels. So difficult was it for this revolution of proletarians to rid itself of bourgeois tinsel. The ire of Pyat was not wanted to convince the Assembly. Rossel's act was culpable in the eyes of the least prejudiced. His arrest was decreed unanimously, less two voices, and the Commission of War received the order to carry it out.