ontmorin refused to see him.
Necker reluctantly consented. He had a way of pointing his nose at the
ceiling, which was not conciliatory, and he received the hated visitor
with a request to know what proposals he had to make. Mirabeau, purple
with rage at this frigid treatment by the man he had come to save,
replied that he proposed to wish him good morning. To Malouet he said,
"Your friend is a fool, and he will soon have news of me." Necker
lived to regret that he had thrown such a chance away. At the time,
the interview only helped to persuade him that the Commons knew their
weakness, and felt the need of his succour.

Just then the expected appeal reached him from the ecclesiastical
quarter. When it was seen that the nobles could not be constrained by
fair words, the Commons made one more experiment with the clergy. On
May 27 they sent a numerous and weighty deputation to adjure them, in
the name of the God of peace and of the national welfare, not to
abandon the cause of united action. The clergy this time invoked the
interposition of Government.

On the 30th conferences were once more opened, and the ministers were
present. The discussion was as inconclusive as before, and, on June 4,
Necker produced a plan of his own. He proposed, in substance, separate
verification, the crown to decide in last instance. It was a solution
favourable to the privileged orders, one of which had appealed to him.
He wanted their money, not their power. The clergy agreed. The
Commons were embarrassed what to do, but were quickly relieved; for
the nobles replied that they had already decided simply to try their
own cases. By this act, on June 9, negotiations were broken off.

The decision had been taken in the apartments of the Duchess of
Polignac, the queen's familiar friend, and it made a breach between
the court and the minister at the first step he had taken since the
Assembly met. Up to this point the aristocracy were intelligible and
consistent. They would make no beginning of surrender until they knew
how far it would lead them, or put themselves at the mercy of a
hostile majority without any assurance for private rights. Malouet
offered them a guarantee, but he was disavowed by his colleagues in a
way that warned the nobles not to be too trusting.

Nobody could say how far the edifice of privilege was condemned to
crumble, or what nucleus of feudal property, however secured by
contract and prescription, would be suffered to r