It advanced of itself, spake of itself, and wrote with its own hand in the streets--on the corner stone--its threatening petitions.
The first that the people presented to the Assembly, on the 14th, and which was escorted by 4000 petitioners, was signed "_The People_." The 14th of July and the 6th of October had taught it its name.

The Assembly, firm and unmoved, passed to the order of the day.
On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative terms.

"Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you destroy the work we have perfected?
Will you replace liberty by a reign of tyranny?
If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which has acquired its rights, will not again lose them." On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries, the Assembly, and the Palais Royal.

Of their own accord they shut up the theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments, until justice should be done to them.

That evening 4000 persons went to the Jacobins, as though to identify in the agitators who met there the real assembly of the people.