imbecilities whirl;
like withered rubbish in the meeting of winds! The Oeil-de-Boeuf has its
irrational hopes, if also its fears. Since hitherto all States-General
have done as good as nothing, why should these do more? The Commons,
indeed, look dangerous; but on the whole is not revolt, unknown now
for five generations, an impossibility? The Three Estates can, by
management, be set against each other; the Third will, as heretofore,
join with the King; will, out of mere spite and self-interest, be eager
to tax and vex the other two. The other two are thus delivered bound
into our hands, that we may fleece them likewise. Whereupon, money being
got, and the Three Estates all in quarrel, dismiss them, and let the
future go as it can! As good Archbishop Lomenie was wont to say: "There
are so many accidents; and it needs but one to save us."--How many to
destroy us?

Poor Necker in the midst of such an anarchy does what is possible for
him. He looks into it with obstinately hopeful face; lauds the known
rectitude of the kingly mind; listens indulgent-like to the known
perverseness of the queenly and courtly;--emits if any proclamation or
regulation, one favouring the Tiers Etat; but settling nothing; hovering
afar off rather, and advising all things to settle themselves. The
grand questions, for the present, have got reduced to two: the Double
Representation, and the Vote by Head. Shall the Commons have a 'double
representation,' that is to say, have as many members as the Noblesse
and Clergy united? Shall the States-General, when once assembled, vote
and deliberate, in one body, or in three separate bodies; 'vote by head,
or vote by class,'--ordre as they call it? These are the moot-points now
filling all France with jargon, logic and eleutheromania. To terminate
which, Necker bethinks him, Might not a second Convocation of the
Notables be fittest? Such second Convocation is resolved on.

On the 6th of November of this year 1788, these Notables accordingly
have reassembled; after an interval of some eighteen months. They are
Calonne's old Notables, the same Hundred and Forty-four,--to show one's
impartiality; likewise to save time. They sit there once again, in their
Seven Bureaus, in the hard winter weather: it is the hardest winter seen
since 1709; thermometer below zero of Fahrenheit, Seine River frozen
over. (Marmontel, Memoires (London, 1805), iv. 33. Hist. Parl, &c.)
Cold, scarcity and eleutheromaniac clamour: a cha