Billioray rose and read a paper that trembled slightly in his hand. "Dombrowski to War and Committee of Public Safety. The Versaillese have entered by the Porte de St. Cloud. I take measures to drive them back. If you can send me reinforcements, I answer for everything."[178] There was first a silence of anguish, soon broken by interpellations. "Some battalions have marched off," answered Billioray; "the Committee of Public Safety watches." The discussion was again taken up, and naturally cut short. The Council acquitted Cluseret; the ridiculous impeachment brought forward by Miot, made up only of gossip, neglected the only incriminating fact--the inactivity of Cluseret during his delegation. They then formed into groups and commented on the despatch. The confidence of Dombrowski, the assurance of Billioray, proved quite sufficient to the romanticists. What with faith in the general, the solidity of the ramparts, the immortality of the cause; what with the responsibility of the Committee of Public Safety, the question at issue was slurred over; let every one go about in search of information, and in case of need betake himself to his own arrondissement. The time was wasted in small-talk; there were neither motion nor debate; eight o'clock struck, and the president raised the sitting. The last sitting of the Council! And there was no one to demand a permanent committee; no one to call on his colleague to wait here for news, to summon the Committee of Public Safety to the bar of the Council. There was no one to insist that at this critical moment of uncertainty, when perhaps it might be necessary to improvise a plan of defence at a moment's notice or take a great resolution in case of disaster, the post of the guardians of Paris was in the centre, at the Hotel-de-Ville, and not in their respective arrondissements. Thus the Council of the Commune disappeared from history and the Hotel-de-Ville at the moment of supreme danger, when the Versaillese penetrated into Paris.