The news of these murders, confusedly spread and variously interpreted in the city, in the Assembly, among various groups, excited various feelings, according as it was viewed as a crime of the people or a crime of its enemies. The truth was only made apparent long after. The agitation increased from the indignation of some and the suspicions of others. Bailly, duly informed, sent three commissaries and a battalion. Other commissaries traversed the quarters of the capital, reading to the people the proclamation of the magistrates and the address of the National Assembly. The ground of the Bastille was occupied by the national guard and the patriotic societies, which were to go thence to the field of the Federation. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Freron, Brissot, and the principal ringleaders of the people had disappeared; some said in order to concert insurrectional measures, at Legendre's house in the country; others, in order to escape the responsibility of the day. The former version was the more generally accredited, from Robespierre's known hatred to Danton, to whom Saint Just said, in his accusation--"Mirabeau, who meditated a change of dynasty, appreciated the force of thy audacity, and laid hands upon it. Thou didst startle him from the laws of stern principle; we heard nothing more of thee until the massacres of the Champ-de-Mars. Thou didst support that false measure of the people, and the proposition of the law, which had no other object than to serve for a pretext for unfolding the red banner, and an attempt at tyranny. The patriots, not initiated in this treachery, had opposed thy perfidious advice. Thou wast named in conjunction with Brissot to draw up this petition. You both escaped the prey of La Fayette, who caused the slaughter of ten thousand patriots. Brissot remained calmly in Paris, and thou didst hasten to Arcis-sur-Aube, to pass some agreeable days. Can one fancy thy tranquil joys--thou being one of the drawers up of this petition, whilst those who signed the document were loaded with irons, or weltering in their blood? You were then--thou and Brissot--objects for the gratitude of tyranny; because, assuredly, you could not be the objects of its detestation!" Camille Desmoulins thus justifies the absence of Danton, himself, and Freron, by asserting that Danton had fled from proscription and assassination to the house of his father-in-law, at Fontenay, on the previous night, and was tracked thither by a band of La Fayette's spies; and that Freron, whilst crossing the Pont Neuf, had been assailed, trampled under foot, and wounded by fourteen hired ruffians; whilst Camille himself, marked for the dagger, only escaped by a mistake in his description. History has not put any faith in these pretended assassinations of La Fayette. Camille, invisible all day, repaired in the evening to the Jacobins. XIII.