ard will not be ordered to oppose their march, and that they may
count on Petion's complicity.

When the march toward the National Assembly begins, hardly more than
fifteen hundred are in line. But the little band increases as it goes.
The route lies through rues Saint-Antoine, de la Verrerie, des
Lombards, de la Ferronnerie, and Saint-Honore. The procession is
headed by soldiers, after whom comes a great poplar stretched upon a
wagon. It is the Liberty tree. According to some, it is to be planted
in the courtyard of the Riding School, opposite the Assembly chamber;
according to others, on the {187} terrace of the Tuileries, before the
principal door of the palace. A military band plays the _Ca ira_,
which is chanted in chorus by the insurrectionary troop. No obstacle
impedes their march. The torrent swells incessantly. The inquisitive
mingle with the bandits. Some are in uniform, some in rags; there are
soldiers, active and disabled, National Guards, workmen, and beggars.
Harlots in dirty silk gowns join the contingent from studios, garrets,
and robbers' dens, and gangs of ragpickers unite with butchers from the
slaughter-houses. Pikes, lances, spits, masons' hammers, paviors'
crowbars, kitchen utensils,--their equipment is oddity itself.

It is noon. The session of the Assembly has just been opened. At this
hour the throng, now numbering some twenty thousand persons, enters the
rue Saint-Honore. The Directory of the Department of Paris demands
admission to the bar on pressing business, and the municipal
attorney-general, Roederer, begins to speak. Heeding neither the
murmurs of the galleries, the disapprobation of part of the Assembly,
nor the clamor sure to be raised against him that evening in the
Jacobin and Cordelier clubs, he boldly announces what is going on. He
reminds them of the law, and the decrees forbidding armed gatherings
which have been issued by the Commune and the Department. He adds
that, without such prohibitions, neither the authorities nor private
individuals have any security for their lives. "We demand," cried he,
"to be invested with {188} complete responsibility; we demand that our
obligation to die for the maintenance of public tranquillity shall in
nowise be diminished."

Vergniaud ascends the platform. He owns that, in principle, the
Assembly is wrong in admitting armed gatherings within its precincts,
but he declares that he thinks it impossible to refuse a permission