The 26th of July passed off very calmly in Paris as a whole. At the Palais Royal, however, some young men were seen mounting chairs, as formerly Camille Desmoulins had done. "They read the _Moniteur_ aloud," says a witness of the scene, "appealed to the people against the infraction of the charter, and endeavoured by violent gesticulation and inflammatory harangues to excite in their hearers and in themselves a vague appetite for agitation. But dancing was going on in the environs of the capital; the people were engaged in labour or amusement. The _bourgeoisie_ alone gave evidence of consternation. The _ordonnances_ had dealt it a twofold blow: they had struck at its political power in the persons of its legislators, and at its moral power in those of its writers." At first there was nothing to be seen throughout the whole _bourgeois_ portion of the population but one dull, uniform stupor. Bankers, traders, manufacturers, printers, lawyers, and journalists accosted each other with scared and astounded looks. There was in this sudden muzzling of the Press a sort of arrogant challenge that stunned men's faculties. So much daring inferred proportionate strength. The most active section of the _bourgeoisie_ went to work on the 27th, and nothing was left undone to stir up the people. The _Gazette_, the _Quotidienne_, and the _Universel_ had submitted to the _ordonnances_ from conviction or from party spirit; the _Journal des Débats_ and the _Constitutionnel_ from fear and mercantile policy. The _Globe_, the _National_, and the _Temps_, which defiantly continued to appear, were profusely circulated. The police order of the preceding day, forbidding their publication, only served to stimulate curiosity. Copies were disposed of by hundreds in the cafés, the reading-rooms, and the restaurants. Journalists hurried from manufactory to manufactory, and from shop to shop, to read the articles aloud and comment upon them. Individuals in the dress, and with the manners and appearance of men of fashion, were seen mounting on stone posts and holding forth as professors of insurrection; whilst students paraded the streets, armed with canes, waving their hats and crying "_Vive la Charte!_" The ordinary demagogues, cast into the midst of a movement they could not comprehend, looked on with surprise at all these things; but, gradually yielding to the contagion of the hour, they imitated the _bourgeoisie_, and running about with bewildered countenances, shouted like others for the charter.