"The
delegates of the people have not believed it their duty to impose
themselves on the Municipal Council by violence and have retired when it
went into session, leaving it to the people to fully appreciate the
situation."[11] "At the moment," says Guillaume, "when ... Mayor Henon,
with an escort of national bourgeois guards, reentered the Hotel de
Ville, he met Bakounin in the hall of the _Pas-Perdus_. The mayor
immediately ordered his companions to take him in custody and to confine
him at once in an underground hiding-place."[12] The Municipal
Councillors then opened their session and pledged that no pursuit should
be instituted in view of the happenings of the day. They voted to
reestablish the former wage of the national dock-yard workers, but
declared themselves unable to undertake the revolutionary measures
proposed by the Committee of Safety of France, as these were outside
their legal province.

In the meantime Bakounin was undergoing an experience far from pleasant,
if we are to judge from the account which he gives in a letter written
the following day: "Some used me brutally in all sorts of ways, jostling
me about, pushing me, pinching me, twisting my arms and hands. I must,
however, admit that others cried: 'Do not harm him.' In truth the
bourgeoisie showed itself what it is everywhere: brutal and cowardly.
For you know that I was delivered by some sharpshooters who put to
flight three or four times their number of these heroic shopkeepers
armed with their rifles. I was delivered, but of all the objects which
had been stolen from me by these gentlemen I was able to find only my
revolver. My memorandum book and my purse, which contained 165 francs
and some sous, without doubt stayed in the hands of these gentlemen....
I beg you to reclaim them in my name. You will send them to me when you
have recovered them."[13]

As a matter of fact, it was at the instance of his follower, Ozerof,
that Bakounin was finally delivered. When he came forth from the Hotel
de Ville, the Committee of Safety of France and its thousands of
sympathizers had disappeared, and he found himself practically alone. He
spent the night at the house of a friend, and departed for Marseilles
the next day, after writing the following letter to Palix: "My dear
friend, I do not wish to leave Lyons without having said a last word of
farewell to you. Prudence keeps me from coming to shake hands with you
for the last time. I have nothing more to