? In a city which respected itself such a fete
would meet nothing but solitude and silence." The controversy {115}
waxed furious. The walls were covered with posters for and against the
fete. Roucher thus flagellated Collot d'Herbois: "This character out
of a comic novel, who skipped from Polichinello's booth to the platform
of the Jacobins, has sprung at me as if he were going to strike me with
the oar the Swiss brought back from the galleys!"

Petion, then mayor of Paris, far from opposing the fete, approved and
encouraged it. "I think it my duty," he wrote, April 6, 1792, "to
explain myself briefly concerning the fete which is being arranged to
celebrate the arrival of the soldiers of Chateauvieux. Minds are
heated, passions are in ferment, and citizens hold different opinions;
everything seems to betoken disorder. It is sought to change a day of
rejoicing into a day of mourning.... What is it all about? Some
soldiers, leaders with the French guards, who have broken our chains
and afterwards been overloaded with them, are about to enter within our
walls; some citizens propose to meet and offer them a fraternal
welcome; these citizens are obeying a natural impulse and using a right
which belongs to all. The magistrates see nothing but what is simple
and innocent in all this; they see certain citizens abandoning
themselves to joy and mirth; every one is at liberty to participate or
not to participate in the fete. Public spirit rises and assumes a new
degree of energy amidst civic amusements." The municipality ordered
this letter of Petion's to be printed, posted on the walls, and {116}
sent to the forty-eight sectional committees and the sixty battalions
of the National Guard.

Not all the members of the National Assembly shared the optimism of the
mayor of Paris. The preparations for the fete, which was announced for
April 15, occasioned, on the 9th, a session as affecting as it was
stormy. The whole debate should be read in the _Moniteur_. The
question was put whether the Swiss of Chateauvieux, then waiting
outside the doors, should be introduced and admitted to the honors of
the session. M. de Gouvion, who had been major-general of the National
Guard under Lafayette, gravely ascended the tribune. "Gentlemen," said
he, "I had a brother, a good patriot, who, through the favorable
opinion of your fellow-citizens, had been successively a commander of
the National Guard and a member from the Department.