ut with fatigue and disgust, have left; Petion,
Lasource, and a few others, who wish to get in, "cannot penetrate the
threatening crowd." To compensate themselves, and in the places of the
absent, the petitioners, constituting themselves representatives of
France, vote with the "Mountain," while the Jacobin president, far
from turning them out, himself invites them "to set aside all obstacles
prejudicial to the welfare of the people.." In this gesticulating crowd,
in the half-light of smoky lamps, amidst the uproar of the galleries, it
is difficult to hear well what motion is put to vote; it is not easy to
see who rises or sits down, and two decrees pass, or seem to pass,
one releasing Hebert and his accomplices, and the other revoking the
commission of the Twelve.[34133] Forthwith the messengers who await the
issue run out and carry the good news to the Hotel-de-ville, the Commune
celebrating its triumph with an explosion of applause.

The next morning, however, notwithstanding the terrors of a call of
the House and the fury of the "Mountain," the majority, as a defensive
stroke, revokes the decree by which it is disarmed, while a new decree
maintains the commission of the Twelve; the operation, accordingly,
is to be done over again, but not the whole of it; for Hebert and the
others imprisoned remain at liberty, while the majority, which, through
a sense of propriety or the instinct of self-preservation, had again
placed its sentinels on the outposts, consents, either through weakness
or hopes of conciliation, to let the prisoners remain free. The result
is they have had the worst of the fight. Their adversaries, accordingly,
are encouraged, and at once renew the attack, their tactics, very
simple, being those which have already proved so successful on the 10th
of August.

The matter now in hand is to invoke against the derived and provisional
rights of the government, the superior and inalienable right of the
people; also, to substitute for legal authority, which, in its nature,
is limited, revolutionary power, which, in its essence, is absolute. To
this end the section of the City, under the vice-presidency of Maillard,
the "Septemberizer," invites the other forty-seven sections each
to elect two commissaries, with "unlimited powers." In thirty-three
sections, purged, terrified, or deserted, the Jacobins, alone, or almost
alone,[34134] elect the most determined of their band, particularly
strangers and rascals, in