Ultimately, however, she fixed upon the young Comte de
Brienne;[181] and so thoroughly did he justify her preference, that he
eventually succeeded, without any appearance of undue interposition, in
securing the election of three presidents, all of whom were favourable
to the Court party.[182]

This important point gained, the Government recovered its confidence;
and its next care was to awaken the jealousy of each order against its
coadjutors, and thus to paralyze the influence of the Assembly. In this
attempt it was perfectly successful; and the general welfare of the
country was overlooked in the anxiety of the several parties to carry
out their own individual views. The clergy demanded the publication of
the decrees of the Council of Trent, and their unrestricted admission
throughout the kingdom; the nobility asked that the privilege of the
_paulette_ should be abolished;[183] and the _tiers-etat_[184]
solicited either the suppression or diminution of the pensions by which
the public treasury was involved in debt.

The speaker elected by the clergy was the Archbishop of Lyons; the
nobility chose as their spokesman the Baron du Pont Saint-Pierre,[185]
while the _tiers-etat_ was presided over by M. Miron.[186] The two
first-named orators addressed the King standing and bareheaded; but this
privilege was considered too great for a body which could boast of
neither hereditary nor ecclesiastical nobility; and the able diplomatist
and rhetorician who upon that occasion pleaded before his sovereign the
rights and immunities of the class which he had been called upon to
represent, was compelled to address that sovereign upon his knees. Miron
had, previous to the meeting of the States, excited the indignation of
the more patrician orders by declaring that he regarded the three bodies
of which it was composed as one family, of which the nobility and clergy
represented the elder, and the _tiers-etat_ the junior branches; while
the Queen herself, even while she felt the importance of his support,
did not hesitate to treat the deputies of his order with the greatest
arrogance and discourtesy, although they distinguished themselves by a
loyalty and devotion to the interests of the Crown which met with no
response from the haughtier members of the Assembly. Ably, indeed,
through the agency of Miron, did they persist in defending the royal
prerogative, and demand that a principle should be established
forbidding the deposition of