bailiwick of Dourdan, which had but eight thousand. The liberality on
which the notables plumed themselves as regarded the qualifications
required in respect of the electors and the eligible was at bottom as
interested as it was injudicious. The fact of domicile and payment of
taxes did not secure to the electors the guaranty given by property; the
vote granted to all nobles whether enfeoffed or not, and to all members
of the clergy for the elections of their orders, was intended to increase
the weight of those elected by the number of suffrages; the high noblesse
and the bishops reckoned wrongly upon the influence they would be able to
exercise over their inferiors. Already, on many points, the petty nobles
and the parish priests were engaged and were to be still more deeply
engaged on the popular side.

At the very moment when the public were making merry over the Assembly of
notables, and were getting irritated at the delay caused by their useless
discussions in the convocation of the States-general, the Parliament, in
one of those sudden fits of reaction with which they were sometimes
seized from their love of popularity, issued a decree explanatory of
their decision on the 24th of September. "The real intentions of the
court," said the decree, "have been distorted in spite of their
plainness. The number of deputies of each order is not determined by any
law, by any invariable usage, and it depends upon the king's wisdom to
adjudge what reason, liberty, justice, and the general wish may
indicate." The Parliament followed up this strange retractation with a
series of wise and far-sighted requests touching the totality of the
public administration. Its part was henceforth finished, wisdom in words
could not efface the effect of imprudent or weak acts; when the decree
was presented to the king, he gave the deputation a cold reception. "I
have no answer to make to the prayers of the Parliament," he replied; "it
is with the States-general that I shall examine into the interests of my
people."

Whilst all the constituted bodies of the third estate, municipalities,
corporations, commissions of provincial assemblies, were overwhelming the
king with their addresses in favor of the people's rights, the Prince of
Conti, whose character always bore him into reaction against the current
of public opinion, had put himself at the head of the opposition of the
courtiers. Already, at one of the committees of the Assembly