Generally, the rogues throughout Paris, intimidated by the awful, immediate and certain penalty for crime, forsook, for the time, their calling. A man who attempted to fire the Palais Royal was shot at the Préfecture. Another, for a like attempt on buildings in the Rue Monceau, met a like fate. In the Rue Richelieu lay the bodies of two thieves, each with a ball through the breast, and over the aperture the word "Thief" on a label. In like manner were eight more robbers executed at once on the Place de la Madeleine. A woman of the street wrested a bracelet from a lady's wrist; she was instantly seized by the bystanders and shot. But for this summary punishment of malefactors by the people, dreadful that night would have been the state of Paris, without laws to enforce or a police to enforce them. It is true the Château of Neuilly was sacked and burned, as well as the splendid villa of the Baron Rothschild at Parennes; but both were supposed to be the property of the King. It is true, also, that some rails on the Northern Railway were torn up, and a viaduct between Paris and Amiens, and another between Amiens and the frontier of Belgium were demolished; and that the railway stations at St. Denis, Enghien and Pontoise and the bridge at Asnières had been destroyed; but all this was done to prevent the concentration upon the citizens of Paris of additional Royal troops.
A workman entered a house and demanded bread. Meat and wine were offered him. "No," was the reply, "bread and water are all I want."
Yet such was the scarcity of food that horses were killed and eaten at the Hôtel de Ville, on the third day of the Revolution.
"Arms--arms!" shouted a band of workmen, entering a house on the Rue Richelieu. The proprietor, alarmed, shouted for help. "Do you think us robbers?" was the indignant reply. "Give us your weapons!"
The weapons were given and the band retired; on the door they wrote, "Here we received arms!"
At five o'clock, on the evening of the 24th of February, a proclamation to the citizens of Paris, issued by the Provisional Government then in session at the Hôtel de Ville, declared the Revolution accomplished--that eighty thousand of the National Guard and one hundred thousand of the people were in arms--that order as well as liberty must now be secured, and the people, with the National Guard, were appointed guardians of Paris.
The effect of this proclamation was magical. Never was Paris so well protected as on that night of the 24th of February, when, filled with barricades, she had no police and was guarded by her citizens.