About eleven o'clock in the morning the Convention felt that the moment for action had arrived. Seeing that the Section Le Peletier was the headquarters, it was resolved to disarm it, and General Menou was ordered to march against it with a sufficient body of troops and artillery. The general came from Sablons and crossed Paris. But when he reached the city he saw something that he had not suspected; namely, that he was opposing the nobility and the richer citizens, the class which represented public opinion. It was not the faubourgs, as he had supposed, which were to be swept with hot shell, it was the Place Vendôme, the Rue Saint-Honoré, the Boulevards, and the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The man of the 1st Prairial hesitated on the 12th Vendémiaire. He went on, however, but so reluctantly that the Convention was obliged to send Representative Laporte to urge him on. All Paris was watching this great duel. Unfortunately the Section Le Peletier had for a president the man whom we already know from his interviews with the president of the Convention and the Chouan general; he was as rapid in his decisions as Menou was feeble and hesitating. Therefore it was already eight o'clock in the evening when General Verdières received orders from General Menou to take sixty grenadiers of the Convention, one hundred of the battalion of the Oise, and twenty horsemen, to form a column on the left side of the Rue des Filles-de-Saint-Thomas, and there to await orders. Scarcely, however, had he entered the Rue Vivienne than Morgan appeared at the door of the Convent of the Daughters of Saint-Thomas, where the Section Le Peletier was in session, and ordered out a hundred of the Sectional party, commanding them to shoulder arms. Morgan's grenadiers obeyed without hesitation. Verdières gave the same order to his troops, but murmurs of dissent were heard. "Friends," cried Morgan, "we shall not fire first, but when the fighting has once begun you need expect no quarter from us. If the Convention wants war it shall have it." Verdières's grenadiers wished to reply, but the general called out: "Silence in the ranks!" He was obeyed. Then he ordered the cavalry to draw their sabres and the infantry to ground arms. In the meantime the centre column arrived by way of the Rue Vivienne, and the right by the Rue Nôtre-Dame-des-Victoires. The entire assembly had been converted into an armed force; a thousand men issued from the convent and formed in the portico. Morgan, sword in hand, placed himself a few steps in advance of the rest.