Outside the joyous clamor of the people enlivened the streets. A spring sun smiled on the Parisians. This was their first day of consolation and of hope for eight months. Before the barricades of the Hotel-de-Ville, at the Buttes Montmartre, in all the boulevards, lookers-on were thronging. Who then spoke of civil war? Only the _Journal Officiel_. It recounted the events in its own way. "The Government had exhausted every means of conciliation," and in a despairing appeal to the National Guard it said, "A committee taking the name of Central Committee has assassinated in cold blood the Generals Clement-Thomas and Lecomte. Who are the members of this Committee? Communists, Bonapartists, or Prussians? Will you take upon yourselves the responsibility of these assassinations?" These lamentations of runaways moved only a few companies of the centre. Yet--a grave symptom this--the young bourgeois of the Polytechnic School came to the mairie of the second arrondissement, where the mayors had flocked, and the students of the universities, till now the advanced guard of all our revolutions, pronounced against the Committee. For this revolution was made by proletarians. Who were they? What did they want? At two o'clock every one hurried to see the placards of the Committee just issued from the Imprimerie Nationale. "Citizens, the people of Paris, calm and impassible in their strength, have awaited without fear, as without provocation, the shameless fools who want to touch our Republic. Let Paris and France together lay the foundation of a true Republic, the only Government which will for ever close the era of revolutions. The people of Paris is convoked to make its elections." And turning to the National Guard: "You have charged us to organise the defence of Paris and of your rights. Our mandate has now expired. Prepare, and at once make your communal elections. Meanwhile we shall, in the name of the people, hold the Hotel-de-Ville." Twenty names[89] followed, which, save three or four, Assi, Lullier, and Varlin, were only known through the placards of the last few days. Since the morning of the 10th August, 1792, Paris has not seen in her Hotel-de-Ville such an advent of obscure men. And yet their placards were respected, their battalions circulated freely. They took possession of the posts; at one o'clock the Ministries of Finance and of the Interior; at two o'clock the Naval and War Offices, the telegraph, the _Journal Officiel_, and Duval was installed at the Prefecture de Police. And they had hit the mark. What indeed could be said against this new-born power whose first word was its own abdication?