The same prostration reigned at the War Office, where they had received the news at five o'clock. The Central Committee went to Delescluze, who seemed very calm, and said, what many indeed believed, that the fight in the streets would be favourable to the Commune. The commander of the section of the Point du Jour having just come to report that nothing serious had happened, the delegate accepted his statements without corroboration. The chief of the general staff did not even think it worth while to go and make a personal recognisance, and towards eight o'clock he had this incredible despatch placarded: "The observatory of the Arc de Triomphe denies the entry of the Versaillese; at least, it sees nothing that looks like it. The commander (Renaud) of the section has just left my cabinet, and declares that there has only been a panic, and that the gate of Auteuil has not been forced; that if a few Versaillese have entered, they have been repulsed. I have sent for eleven battalions of reinforcements, by as many officers of the general staff, who are not to leave them till they have led them to the posts which they are to occupy." At the same hour M. Thiers telegraphed to his prefects, "The gate of St. Cloud has fallen under the fire of our cannon. General Douai has dashed into the town." A two-fold lie. The gate of St. Cloud had been wide open for three days without the Versaillese daring to pass it, and General Douai had crept in very modestly, man by man, introduced by treason. At night the Ministry seemed to wake up a little. Officers flocked thither asking for orders. The general staff would not allow the tocsin to be sounded, on the pretext that the population must not be alarmed. Some members of the Council pored over the plan of Paris at last, studying those strategical points that had been forgotten for six weeks. When it was necessary at once to find an idea, a method, and give precise instructions, the delegate shut himself in his cabinet in order to frame a proclamation. While in the midst of Paris, confident in her trustees, a few men, without soldiers, without information, prepared the first resistance, the Versaillese continued to slip in through the breaches of the ramparts. Wave on wave their flood grew silent, veiled by the dusk. By degrees they massed themselves between the railway line and the fortifications. At eight o'clock they were numerous enough to divide into two columns, one of which, turning to the left, crowned the bastions 66 and 67, while the other filed off to the right on the route to Versailles. The first lodged itself in the centre of Passy, occupying the St. Perine asylum, the church, and the place of Auteuil; the other, having swept away the rudimentary barricade constructed on the quay at the top of the Rue Guillon, towards one o'clock in the morning, by the Rue Raynouard, scaled the Trocadero, neither fortified nor manned on this side, and at once took possession of it.