At last, however, the Girondists began to recognise their danger. In April they attacked Marat, and sent him before the Revolutionary Tribunal. But Marat was triumphantly acquitted. They denounced the insurrectionary plots in the Sections. But the plots went merrily on. They refused to listen to Danton's overtures of conciliation. They obtained addresses of confidence from the departments. They proposed to appeal to the country against Paris. They suggested that the Convention should be moved to Versailles or Bourges. But all these proposals were without result. Later still, as their apprehensions increased, they boldly talked of dissolving the Commune, and on the 18th May they carried a motion appointing an extraordinary Commission of Twelve, to enquire into the conspiracies against the Convention. At the end, though they lacked unity, they did not lack vigour. The Commission intrepidly challenged the plotters, and struck at the chief by arresting Hébert. Hébert's arrest precipitated the crisis, and the alarm which it caused in the camp of the Commune showed that the Jacobins felt the gravity of the Girondist attack. But in order to make their attack effective, the Girondists must have had a force behind them, and this they had not the penetration to perceive or the power or resolution to create. Yet it cannot be said that their leaders were unwarned. Garat, their principal representative in the Ministry, complacently shut his eyes to the danger, and to the last moment assured his colleagues that Paris was quiet and that nothing need be feared. And yet Garat had at the time in his service a small staff of secret police, who were daily reporting to him on the condition of Paris, and among them one, Dutard, an observer of singular acuteness, whose reports the minister apparently laid on the shelf unread, but whose name and counsels deserve to be rescued from oblivion. In Dutard's reports we have striking evidence of the apathy of the great mass of the Parisians, of their indifference to Girondists and Jacobins alike. If Dutard's opinion is to be trusted, most of the small traders and working people, who had welcomed the Revolution with enthusiasm and who had acquiesced in the downfall of the throne, had since passed into the ranks of disaffection. The butchers, the tailors, the shoemakers, the wine-dealers, even the market-women and the better artisans had ceased to belong to the advanced party. The recruits of the Commune in May were drawn from a lower and more reckless class, from unemployed or idle workmen, from porters, hucksters, foreigners and domestic servants, reinforced by criminals and outcasts, and swelled by the social refuse of great cities, which no legislation or philanthropy has yet been able to remove. This ignorant and undisciplined body, easily led and easily misled, very sensitive to want and panic, not very sensitive to principle or order, formed a force on which the