unty of Melgueil, which the Bishop of Maguelonne held in
fief from the holy see. Boniface provoked Philip by a
chiding bull, and added to the provocation by sending to the
King, as negotiator in their differences, Bernard de
Saisset, whom the Pope, in spite of the King, had created
Bishop of Pamiers.

This tactless prelate made matters worse by an arrogant
attitude, and afterward spoke of the King, who received him
in sombre silence, as "that debaser of coinage, that proud
and dumb image that knows nothing but to stare at people
without saying anything."

Ignoring his ambassadorial privileges, Philip had him
arrested and imprisoned as a French subject, on a charge of
treason, heresy, and blasphemy, and sent his chancellor,
Peter Flotte, and William de Nogaret, to the Pope, to demand
the prelate's degradation and deprivation of his see.

The Pope, who meanwhile had launched his famous "Ausculta,
fili," bull, received Philip's ambassadors, but their
interview was marked by a violent scene: "My power!"
exclaimed the Pope, "the spiritual power embraces and
includes the temporal power!"

"So be it!" replied Flotte, "but your power is verbal; that
of the King, real."

To deliberate on the remedies for the abuses of which he
deemed the King guilty, the Pope summoned all the superior
clergy of France to an assembly at Rome.

Philip and his council resolved to fight the enemy with its own weapons,
to enlist public opinion on their side, and to shelter themselves behind
a great national manifestation; the three estates of France were
convoked at Notre Dame in Paris, the 10th of April, 1302, to take
cognizance of the differences between the King and the Pope. For the
first time since the establishment of the kingdom of France, the town
deputies were called to sit in a body in a national assembly, alongside
of prelates and barons; this great event was the official acknowledgment
of the middle class as the "Third Estate," and attested that henceforth
the villages, the towns, the communities formed a collective entity, a
political order.

It is a singular thing that the first states-general was freely convoked
by the most despotic of the kings of the Middle Ages, and that he had
the idea to seek in them moral power and support.

The attempt would seem foolhardy in a prince so little popular as Philip
the Fair; but Philip in reality risked nothing, and knew it; the
feudali