CHAPTER VI. THE BIRTH OF THE TERRIBLE PARIS COMMUNE. I.--Indignation of the Constitutionalists. Cause of their weakness.--The Girondins renew the attack. --Their double plan. As the blow has missed the target, it must be repeated. This is the more urgent, inasmuch as the faction has thrown off the mask and "honest people"[2601] on all sides become indignant at seeing the Constitution subject to the arbitrariness of the lowest class. Nearly all the higher administrative bodies, seventy-five of the department directories,[2602] give in their adhesion to Lafayette's letter, or respond by supporting the proclamation, so noble and so moderate, in which the King, recounting the violence done to him, maintains his legal rights with mournful, inflexible gentleness. Many of the towns, large and small, thank him for his firmness, the addresses being signed by "the notables of the place,"[2603] chevaliers of St. Louis, former officials, judges and district-administrators, physicians, notaries, lawyers, recorders, post-masters, manufacturers, merchants, people who are settled down, in short the most prominent and the most respected men. At Paris, a similar petition, drawn up by two former Constituents, contains 247 pages of signatures attested by 99 notaries.[2604] Even in the council-general of the commune a majority is in favor of publicly censuring the mayor Pétion, the syndic-attorney Manuel, and the police administrators Panis, Sergent, Viguer, and Perron.[2605] On the evening of June 20th, the department council orders an investigation; it follows this up; it urges it on; it proves by authentic documents the willful inaction, the hypocritical connivance, the double-dealing of the syndic-attorney and the mayor;[2606] it suspends both from their functions, and cites them before the courts as well as Santerre and his accomplices. Lafayette, finally, adding to the weight of his opinion the influence of his presence, appears at the bar of the National Assembly and demands "effectual" measures against the usurpations of the Jacobin sect, insisting that the instigators of the riot of the 20th of June be punished "as guilty of lése-nation." As a last and still more significant symptom, his proceedings are approved of in the Assembly by a majority of more than one hundred votes.[2607]