The hesitations and inactivity of the French army during the first days of the war filled with misgiving the Adams and their friends. “We had thought,” writes Juliette,[176] “that we could arrest the Prussian advance by throwing ourselves before the enemy with all our _furia francese_ and our united forces. But already our troops are scattered. There are marches and countermarches, but no advance. As during the Italian war, so now, there is no unity of command.” In those days Parisians, like ourselves during the present war, were troubled by the lack of news. Silence, suspense, were harder to bear than anything. “A frightful silence fills the boulevard,” writes Edmond de Goncourt. “There is not a carriage to be heard, not a child’s cry of joy, and on the horizon is a Paris where sound itself seems dead.” When it did arrive the news was as bad as could be. All through August came tidings of defeat after defeat: Wissembourg on the 4th; Forbach and Woerth on one day, the 6th; then, on the 9th, the fall of Ollivier and the Ministry; finally, on the 1st of September, the rout of Sedan. On the evening of the 3rd, when about six o’clock the terrible tidings began to spread like wild-fire through Paris, people came out into the streets, crowds thronged the boulevards, growing every hour. By ten o’clock, Paris between the Rue Montmartre and the Grand Opéra presented the appearance of one immense forum. Juliette went down and mingled with the people, listening to their conversation. Everywhere the humiliation and disgrace of France were described as unbearable. All manner of charges were brought against the Emperor. Napoléon was said to have surrendered, not himself alone, but the munitions of the army. His own personal baggage, however, that long train of wagons encumbering the march of his soldiers, which had won for him the nickname of _Empereur Colis_ (Luggage Emperor), he had saved from the hands of the enemy.[177] “The Prussians will be at Laon to-morrow, and in three days before Paris,” murmured one. “Wherever you look it is ruin. Our last army has capitulated. We are a nation no longer. We are nothing but a troop of prisoners.” “Down with the Empire!” shouted hundreds of voices. All the hatred of the crowd at first focussed on Buonaparte, then it turned against the Corps Legislatif, the Parliament, which had voted this accursed war, and by its baseness had consummated the national disaster. The Chamber had been hastily convoked, and at midnight it was still sitting. “We must march against it and turn it out,” howled the crowd. But on the point of falling in for this purpose there was a hesitation. “What should be the rallying cry?” Parisians more than any other people in the world have ever been dominated by fine and appropriate words. And it was perfectly characteristic of the Paris mob that it found itself incapable of proceeding until it should have discovered _le mot juste_, the rallying cry, which should lead it like a banner.