The assembly had met at the sound of the tocsin. The minister of the interior, the administrators of the department, and the mayor of Paris had been summoned, in succession, to the bar. Garat had given an account of the agitated state of Paris, but appeared to apprehend no dangerous result. Lhuillier, in the name of the department, declared it was only a _moral_ insurrection. Pache, the mayor, appeared last, and informed them, with an hypocritical air, of the operations of the insurgents; he pretended that he had employed every means to maintain order; assured them that the guard of the convention had been doubled, and that he had prohibited the firing of the alarm cannon; yet, at the same moment, the cannon was heard in the distance. The surprise and excitement of the assembly were extreme. Cambon exhorted the members to union, and called upon the people in the strangers' gallery to be silent. "Under these extraordinary circumstances," said he, "the only way of frustrating the designs of the malcontents is to make the national convention respected." "I demand," said Thuriot, "the immediate abolition of the Commission of Twelve." "And I," cried Tallien, "that the sword of the law may strike the conspirators who profane the very bosom of the convention." The Girondists, on their part, required that the audacious Henriot should be called to the bar, for having fired the alarm cannon without the permission of the convention. "If a struggle take place," said Vergniaud, "be the success what it may, it will be the ruin of the republic. Let every member swear to die at his post." The entire assembly rose, applauding the proposition. Danton rushed to the tribune: "Break up the Commission of Twelve! you have heard the thunder of the cannon. If you are politic legislators, far from blaming the outbreak of Paris, you will turn it to the profit of the republic, by reforming your own errors, by dismissing your commission.--I address those," he continued, on hearing murmurs around him, "who possess some political talent, not dullards, who can only act and speak in obedience to their passions.--Consider the grandeur of your aim; it is to save the people from their foes, from the aristocrats, to save them from their own blind fury. If a few men, really dangerous, no matter to what party they belong, should then seek to prolong a movement, become useless, by your act of justice, Paris itself will hurl them back into their original insignificance. I calmly, simply, and deliberately demand the suppression of the commission, on political grounds." The commission was violently attacked on one side, feebly defended on the other; Barrère and the committee of public safety, who were its creators proposed its suppression, in order to restore peace, and to save the assembly from being left to the mercy of the multitude. The moderate portion of the Mountain were about to adopt this concession, when the deputations arrived. The members of the department, those of the