M. Bailly was not there; he was at the Place Vendome, watching the proceedings of the Assembly; but they found his substitute, told him of the matter, found him not unwilling, and demanded a written authorization. He said he did not see the necessity—a verbal permission being quite sufficient; that the people were always legal, exercising only their right of petition. I returned to M. Duplay’s, telling him that the petition would be signed to-morrow, and that the signature would be approved of by Bailly, or, at least, by his substitute. We were ignorant of what was going on in the Assembly. The Assembly had learnt the decision taken by the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. It would not do to allow the people to take this supremacy upon itself. They appealed to Bailly and the municipal council. At ten o’clock, Bailly and his council decided that on the morrow, Sunday, 17th July, the decree of the Assembly, hearing “that the suppression of executive power should last until the Constitutional Act had been presented to, and accepted by, the King,” should be fixed at eight o’clock punctually, and that proclamation of the decree should be with sound of trumpet proclaimed by the huissiers of the city. Therefore, whoever did not recognise an act proceeding from the National Assembly—that is to say, the people’s representatives—should be rebels to the law, and should be treated as such. CHAPTER XLII. WHAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE HAIRDRESSER AND THE INVALID. We had for neighbor, in the Rue St. Honoré, two doors lower down than our own, a hair-dresser, named Léger. This hair-dresser, like all his _confrères_, was a staunch Royalist. No doubt the reader would ask the reason why hair-dressers were all Royalists. That is easily explained. The hair-dressers’ was one of the corporations that had suffered the most in the Revolution. Those under Louis XV, and even under Louis XVI—who had invented such fantastic head-dresses, worn by the ladies of the nobility for more than half a century—were a body of men not to be despised. Hair-dressers of this period had a select circle of their own, and many privileges, which they would not surrender, even on the night of the 4th of August. Not only could they mix in the society of the larger circles, but had the _entrées_ to the more select boudoirs of the noblesse, and also carried the sword, as was customary with gentlemen. It is true that this sword, at most times, was of no more use than a harlequin’s wand, being but a mere toy. Of some, the blades were simply wood, others having no blade at all, the handle being attached to the scabbard.