[87] Ten days after he recounted in a crazy letter written in the Conciergerie that he had done everything; taken the Hotel-de-Ville, the Prefecture of Police, the Place Vendome, the Tuileries, &c.; and this letter is referred to as an authority by the report of the _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_! For the future, I shall abstain from pointing out the errors that abound in this report, which is an ignorant and malignant resume of the lies, inaccuracies, and animosity accumulated in this _Inquiry_, from which all the vanquished, and even the smallest adversaries, were excluded. Entirely insufficient as a historical source, it may well serve to set forth the intelligence and morality of the French bourgeoisie of the epoch. [88] _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_, Marreille, vol. ii. p. 200. CHAPTER IV. "Nos coeurs brises font appel aux votres."--_Les Maires et Adjoints de Paris et les Deputes de la Seine a la Garde Nationale et a tous les Citoyens._ THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE CONVOKES THE ELECTORS--THE MAYORS OF PARIS AND DEPUTIES OF THE SEINE TURN AGAINST IT. Paris only became aware of her victory on the morning of the 19th of March. What a change in the scene, even after all the scene-shifting in the drama enacted during these last seven months! The red flag floated above the Hotel-de-Ville. With the early morning mists the army, the Government, the Administration had evaporated. From the depths of the Bastille, from the obscure Rue Basfroi, the Central Committee was lifted to the summits of Paris in the sight of all the world. Thus on the 4th September the Empire had vanished; thus the deputies of the Left had picked up a derelict power. The Committee, to its great honour, had only one thought, to restore its power to Paris. Had it been sectarian, hatching decrees, the movement would have ended like that of the 31st October. Happily it was composed of new-comers, without a past, and without political pretensions; men of the small middle-class, as well as workmen, shopkeepers, commercial clerks, mechanics, sculptors, architects, caring little for systems, anxious above all to save the Republic. At this giddy height they had but one idea to sustain them, that of securing to Paris her municipality.