On the other hand, the representatives and mayors told the people, "No election; everything is for the best. We wanted the maintenance of the National Guard; we shall have it. We wanted Paris to recover her municipal liberty; we shall have it. Your requests have been brought before the Assembly. The Assembly _has satisfied them_ by a unanimous vote, which guarantees the municipal elections. Awaiting these, the only legal elections, we declare that we shall abstain from the elections announced for to-morrow, and we protest against their illegality." Thrice-lying address! The Assembly had not said a word of the National Guard; it had promised no municipal liberty, and several of the signatures were supposititious. The bourgeois press followed suit. Since the 19th the Figarist papers, supported by the police, the altar, and the alcove, the Liberal gazettes, by which Trochu had prepared the capitulation of Paris, had not ceased to fall foul of the federal battalions. They spoke of the public coffers and private property being pillaged, of Prussian gold streaming into the faubourgs, of documentary evidence hurtful to the members of the Central Committee destroyed by them. The Republican journals also discovered gold in the movement, but Bonapartist gold; and the best of them, naively convinced that the Republic belonged to their patrons, inveigled against the accession of the proletariat, saying, "These people dishonour us." Emboldened by the mayors and deputies, they all agreed to revolt; and on the 21st, in a collective declaration, asked the electors to consider as null and void the illegal convocation of the Hotel-de-Ville. Illegality! Thus the question was put by the Legitimists, twice imposed on us by foreign bayonets; by the Orleanists, raised to power through barricades; by the brigands of December; even by the exiles returned home, thanks to an insurrection. What! When the bourgeois, who make all laws, always act illegally, how are the workmen to proceed, against whom all the laws are made? These attacks of the mayors and deputies and of the press screwed up the courage of the Hectors of the reaction. For two days this rabble of runaways, who during the siege had infested the cafes of Brussels and the Haymarket of London, gesticulated on the fashionable boulevards, asking for order and _work_. On the 21st, at about ten o'clock, at the Place de la Bourse, about a hundred of these strange workingmen marched round the Stock Exchange, banners flying, and advancing along the boulevards to the cries of "Vive l'Assemblee!" came to the Place Vendome, shouting before the general staff, "Down with the Committee!" The commander of the Place, Bergeret, told them to send delegates. "No, no!" cried they; "no delegates! You would assassinate them!" The federals, losing patience, had the Place cleared. The riotous fops gave themselves a rendezvous for the next day before the new Opera-House.