Everything around them bore a warlike aspect. Let us cross the half-open barricades of the Rue de Rivoli. Twenty thousand men camped in the square of the Hotel-de-Ville; bread stuck on the end of their muskets. Fifty ordnance pieces, cannon, and mitrailleuses drawn up along the facade served as the _chevaux de frise_ of the town hall. The court and staircases encumbered with guards taking their meals, the large Salle du Trone swarming with officers, guards, and civilians. In the hall on the left, which was used by the staff, the noise subsided. The room by the river-side, at the corner of the edifice, was the antechamber of the Committee. About fifty men were writing there, bending over a long table. There discipline and silence reigned. We were far from the anarchists of the 31st October. From time to time the door, guarded by two sentinels, opened to a member of the Committee who carried orders or made inquiries. The sitting had recommenced. A member asked the Committee to protest against the executions of Clement-Thomas and Lecomte, to which it was entirely foreign. "Take care not to disavow the people," answered another, "for fear they in turn should disavow you." A third said, "The _Journal Officiel_ declares the execution took place under our eyes. We must stop these calumnies. The people and the bourgeoisie have joined hands in this revolution. This union must be maintained. You want everybody to take part in the elections." "Well, then," he was apostrophised, "abandon the people in order to gain the bourgeoisie; the people will withdraw, and you will see if it is with the bourgeois that revolutions are made."[90] The Committee decided that a note should be inserted in the _Journal Officiel_ to re-establish the truth. Ed. Moreau proposed and read the draft of a manifesto, which was adopted. The Committee were discussing the date and mode of the elections when it was informed that a large meeting of the chiefs of battalions, the mayors and deputies of the Seine was being held at the mairie of the third arrondissement. M. Thiers, during the morning, had given over to the union of the mayors the provisional administration of Paris, and they were trying their authority on the National Guard. The Committee was assured that they intended to convoke the electors.