ter the blow, with so little hesitation or consideration,
that Bailly ought not to have absented himself from the House of the
Commune, we must forget that, under such circumstances, the obligations
of the first magistrate of the city were quite imperious and very
numerous; it is requisite, above all, not to remember that each day, the
provision of flour required for the nourishment of seven or eight
hundred thousand inhabitants, depended on the measures adopted on the
previous evening. M. de Crosne, who on quitting the post of Lieutenant
of Police, had not ceased to be a citizen, was during some days a very
enlightened and zealous councillor for Bailly; but on the day that
Foulon was arrested, this dismissed magistrate thought himself lost. He
and his family made an appeal to the gratitude and humanity of our
colleague. It was to procure a refuge for them, that Bailly employed the
few hours of absence with which he was so much reproached: those hours
during which that catastrophe happened which the Mayor could not have
prevented, since even the superhuman efforts of General Lafayette,
commanding an armed force, proved futile. I will add, that to spare M.
de Crosne an arbitrary arrest, the imminent danger of which alas! was
too evident in the death of Berthier, Bailly absented himself again from
the Hotel de Ville on the night of the 22d to the 23d of July, to
accompany the former Lieutenant of Police to a great distance from
Paris.

There is not a more distressing spectacle than that of one honest man
wrongfully attacking another honest man. Gentlemen, let us never
willingly leave the satisfaction and the advantage of it to the wicked.

To appreciate the actions of our predecessors with impartiality and
justice, it would be indispensable to keep constantly before our eyes
the list of unheard-of difficulties that the revolution had to surmount,
and to remember the very restricted means of repression placed at the
disposal of the authorities in the beginning.

The scarcity of food gave rise to many embarrassments, to many a crisis;
but causes of quite another nature had not less influence on the march
of events.

In his memoirs, Bailly speaks of the manoeuvres of a redoubtable
faction labouring for ... under the name of the.... The names are blank.
A certain editor of the work filled up the lacunae. I have not the same
hardihood, I only wished to remark that Bailly had to combat at once
both the spontaneous effervesc