cois, Vieux Versailles! A
naked Tennis-Court, as the pictures of that time still give it: four
walls; naked, except aloft some poor wooden penthouse, or roofed
spectators'-gallery, hanging round them:--on the floor not now an idle
teeheeing, a snapping of balls and rackets; but the bellowing din of an
indignant National Representation, scandalously exiled hither! However,
a cloud of witnesses looks down on them, from wooden penthouse, from
wall-top, from adjoining roof and chimney; rolls towards them from all
quarters, with passionate spoken blessings. Some table can be procured
to write on; some chair, if not to sit on, then to stand on. The
Secretaries undo their tapes; Bailly has constituted the Assembly.

Experienced Mounier, not wholly new to such things, in Parlementary
revolts, which he has seen or heard of, thinks that it were well, in
these lamentable threatening circumstances, to unite themselves by an
Oath.--Universal acclamation, as from smouldering bosoms getting vent!
The Oath is redacted; pronounced aloud by President Bailly,--and indeed
in such a sonorous tone, that the cloud of witnesses, even outdoors,
hear it, and bellow response to it. Six hundred right-hands rise with
President Bailly's, to take God above to witness that they will
not separate for man below, but will meet in all places, under all
circumstances, wheresoever two or three can get together, till they have
made the Constitution. Made the Constitution, Friends! That is a long
task. Six hundred hands, meanwhile, will sign as they have sworn:
six hundred save one; one Loyalist Abdiel, still visible by this sole
light-point, and nameable, poor 'M. Martin d'Auch, from Castelnaudary,
in Languedoc.' Him they permit to sign or signify refusal; they even
save him from the cloud of witnesses, by declaring 'his head deranged.'
At four o'clock, the signatures are all appended; new meeting is fixed
for Monday morning, earlier than the hour of the Royal Session; that our
Hundred and Forty-nine Clerical deserters be not balked: we shall meet
'at the Recollets Church or elsewhere,' in hope that our Hundred and
Forty-nine will join us;--and now it is time to go to dinner.

This, then, is the Session of the Tennis-Court, famed Seance du Jeu de
Paume; the fame of which has gone forth to all lands. This is Mercurius
de Breze's appearance as Deus ex machina; this is the fruit it brings!
The giggle of Courtiers in the Versailles Avenue has already died
into