The reckless demagogues, who had been so long striving to fire the people into a fiendish spirit of revolt, saw in all this an element of revolution stronger than their eloquence, and seized upon it with sharp energy. The clubs arose at once, uniting in one grand effort; but it was in answer to a clamorous demand from the people, who, ready for revolution, called aloud for guides and leaders. CHAPTER LVIII. THE FIRST ROLL OF THUNDER. The time had come. One night the streets of Paris were darkened by crowds of silent, stern men whose eager faces looked sinister in the lamplight, as they turned invariably toward the Place do Grève. The men moved swiftly on in comparative silence; but wherever they paused a warehouse was broken open, and everything of iron or steel it contained taken therefrom, though all other articles were scrupulously left untouched. Women, too, came out of their domicils, and swelled the stream that poured into the Place de Grève. Each carried some burden—a loaf of bread, a bar of rusty iron, or a ponderous fire-shovel, from her own hearthstone. Before midnight the Place de Grève, and the adjoining streets broke into a blaze. Anvils and forges in full blast seemed to start out of the very earth, lighting up all the grand outlines of the Hotel de Ville and the great crowds of men and women that swarmed around it, with gleams of light thrown against deep, deep shadows, that made the whole scene terrible. To this was added the sharp ring of iron against steel, the roll of wheels bringing in heavy loads of plunder, the crash of hammers thundering to each other, and the awful hum and swell of angry voices in suppression. Men toiled that night like demons. Many who had thought themselves too feeble and famished for exertion, now wrangled with each other for a chance of work at the forges. Pale, hungry faces grew stern as death in the lurid light of the fire; while demagogues from the clubs, and Bohemians of the press, passed in and out of the crowd with inflammatory words, which kept the wild enthusiasm at a white heat. Women crowded in, some with their arms bare to the shoulders, unloading wagons like men; others enforcing the fiery ardor of the demagogues with passionate appeals, and hurling bitter taunts on those who stood aloof. The market women, having broken up their stock for the next day, distributed stores of provisions to the workmen, and fed the hungry with their own hands. Some even seized upon the tools, and began to forge instruments of slaughter with the skill and energy of men; some mounted on piles of arms already forged, and harangued the men as they worked. Among these appeared Madame Gosner, the martyr of the day, whose presence was everywhere heralded with tumults of sympathy and applause.