This ferocious document was printed in all the Royalist papers in Paris on the 28th of July. The king immediately issued a message disavowing any agency in the manifesto. But the people no longer had any confidence in the word of the king. Paris was thrown into a state of terrible agitation. The forty-eight sections of Paris met, and commissioned the mayor, Pétion, to appear before the General Assembly, and petition, in their name, the dethronement of the king. On the 3d of August, Pétion, at the head of a numerous deputation, presented himself before the Assembly. In an address, calm, unimpassioned, but terrible in its severity, he retraced the whole course of the king from the commencement of the Revolution, and closed with the solemn demand for the dethronement of Louis XVI., as the most dangerous enemy of the nation. The Assembly was embarrassed by its desire to adhere to the Constitution which it had sworn to obey. The dethronement of the king was not a _constitutional_ but a _revolutionary_ act. A long and stormy debate ensued, during which the hall was flooded with petitions against the king. The king's friends were again intensely anxious to secure his escape. But the king would not listen to their plans, for he was so infatuated as to believe that the Duke of Brunswick would soon, by an unimpeded march, be in Paris for his rescue. The sympathy which La Fayette had manifested for the royal family had now ruined him in the esteem of the populace. He was every where denounced as a traitor, and a strong effort was made to compel the Assembly to indite a bill of accusation against him. But La Fayette's friends in the chamber rallied, and he was absolved from the charge of treason by a vote of four hundred and forty-six against two hundred and eighty. The populace was so exasperated by this result that they heaped abuse upon all who voted in his favor, and several of them were severely maltreated by the mob. The National Assembly had now become unpopular. It was ferociously denounced in the club of the Jacobins and in all the corners of the streets. In the mean time the insurrectionary committee, formed from the Jacobin club, were busy in preparation for the great insurrection. All hearts were appalled, for all could see that a cloud of terrific blackness was gathering, and no one could tell what limit there would be to the ravages of the storm.