Much astonishment was occasioned by the great number of returned emigrés, some with false passports and under assumed names, others giving their real names, and demanding that they should be erased from the list of the proscribed; others with false certificates of residence, which vouched for the fact that they had never left France. Decrees, insisting that all returned emigrés should return to their own districts, and there await the decision of the Committee of Public Safety, were issued in vain. They found means to evade these decrees and to remain in Paris. It was felt, not without uneasiness, that accident alone had not brought so many men of the same political faith to the capital at the same time. It was generally conceded that some malign influence was at work, and that at a given moment the earth would open beneath the feet of one of the numerous parties which abounded in Paris. A great many gray coats with black and green collars were seen, and every one turned to look at them. They were the Chouan colors. Wherever these young men, who wore the royal livery, were seen, brawls were almost sure to ensue, which thus far had passed for private quarrels. Dessault and Marchenna, the most famous pamphleteers of the day, covered the walls with posters inciting the Parisians to insurrection. Old La Harpe, the pretended pupil of Voltaire, who began by vowing him the most servile adoration and ended by rejecting him--La Harpe, after being a furious demagogue, during an imprisonment became a most violent reactionary, and insulted the Convention which had honored him. A man named Lemaistre kept a house in Paris where the royalist propagande was openly carried on, and was in communication with several provincial branches. He hoped by increasing their number to convert France into one immense Vendée. There was an important branch at Nantes, which, of course, received its orders from Paris. Now Lemaistre, as was well known, had given a splendid dinner to the electors of Nantes, at the end of which the host, in imitation of the guards of Versailles, had had a dish of white cockades served. Each guest took one and fastened it in his hat.