mended that they should go to Old Versailles, to the Jeu de Paume, or tennis-court, and this plan was adopted.
Before leaving, the courteous officer permitted Bailly and about half-a-dozen deputies to enter, and bring out their papers. The carpenters were already at work, making preparations for the royal seance, and as the body of the deputies, now nearly completing their six hundred, marched through the streets, they heard the heralds proclaiming it for Monday, the 22nd. Bailly felt that there was more indignity intended than even that of turning them so unceremoniously out of their house, for a message had been sent to him from the king, announcing the seance, but it had not been delivered to him, as etiquette required, at the hall, but at his private house, and not by a written dispatch, but verbally by De Breze, the master of ceremonies. When the deputies, with their president at their head, reached the tennis-court, they found it a very spacious apartment, but naked, unfurnished, and desolate. There were no seats for the deputies, and a chair being offered to Bailly he declined it, saying he would not sit whilst the other members were standing. A wooden bench was brought, and served for a desk, two deputies were stationed as doorkeepers, and the keeper of the court appeared and offered them his services. Great numbers of the populace crowded in, and the deliberations commenced. There were loud complaints of the interruption of their sitting, and many proposals to prevent such accidents in future. It was proposed to adjourn to Paris, where they would have the support of the people, and this project was received with enthusiasm; but Bailly feared that they might be attacked on the way, and, moreover, that such a measure would give an advantage to their enemies, looking like a desertion of their ground. Mounier then proposed that the deputies should bind themselves by an oath never to separate till they had completed the constitution. This was hailed with enthusiasm. The oath was drawn up, and Bailly, standing on the bench, read it aloud:—"You solemnly swear never to separate, and to re-assemble whenever circumstances shall require it, until the constitution of the kingdom is founded and established on a solid basis." As he read this all the deputies held up their right hands, and repeated after him the words, "We swear!" The formula was read so loud that not only the spectators within but numbers without heard it, and all joined in the cry, "We swear!" Then followed loud acclaims of "Vive l'Asemblée!" Vive le Roi!"
The deputies then proceeded to sign the declaration, and out of the six hundred there was but one dissentient. This Was one Martin D'Auch, of Castelnaudery, in Languedoc, who would neither swear nor sign; but being dragged to the table, and in danger of injury from the indignant populace, at length signed, but added the word opposer. A terrible tumult arose, D'Auch was in danger of being torn to pieces, but Bailly protected and smuggled him out at a back door. His protest was allowed to stand on the paper, as a proof of freedom of action in the assembly.
The assembly then adjourned to Monday, the day of the royal seance, but to an earlier hour. The next day being Sunday, vast crowds poured into Versailles from Paris, where the news of the insult offered to the assembly, by shutting it out of its proper hall, had excited the wildest indignation. Threats of the fiercest kind had been uttered against the very highest persons. It should be recollected that at this time the whole of the tiers etat, if, perhaps, we except the yet but little conspicuous Robespierre, were royalists; but the court was now, by every fresh movement, destroying that attachment to the old traditions of monarchy. The first effect of these fatal measures of the court had been to induce the minority of eighty to swear along with the rest of the tiers.
In the meantime, there were busy plannings and discussions at the palace. The nobility, alarmed at the resolution shown by the tiers, went on the Sunday thither, to excuse themselves for having prevented the union of the states-general, by introducing restrictions into the plan of conciliation. But the minority consisted of forty-seven members, including the duke of Liancoiut, a warm friend of the king; the duke de Rochefoucauld, a man of high character and talents; Lally-Tollendal, Clermont-Tonnere, both eloquent men; the brothers Lameth, both colonels, brave and intelligent; Duport, of great firmness and sagacity; and the marquis Lafayette, too well known for his part in the American revolution, to merit particular mention here. At the council at court, Necker urged his plan of conciliation, which, however, if accepted by the king, would produce little effect. Although Necker, in his works, has assured us that his plan was an extremely bold one, it merely amounted to this:—Those necessary reforms, which the court had so long refused, he would concede, through the king, thus making the national liberties a royal gift instead of a right demanded and established by the states; and he continued to expect the accomplishment of this from the king, though he knew that he was a mere puppet in the hands of the queen and courtiers. He proposed that there should be two legislative chambers, in imitation of the English ones; thus the clergy, or at least the titled ones, would sit with the lords. The king would permit the three orders to deliberate on general affairs; but there was to be no general discussion of anything relating to privileges, rights attached to fiefs, &c.; the very matters into which, of all things, it was necessary to admit the searching force of public opinion. Necker would retain the old and lumbering machinery of provincial parliaments, useless if there were a proper general one, and in all cases destroying unity of action. His parliaments were to sit with closed doors; there should be no publicity. As to the monstrous abuses of the law and of the executive, he would not at once abolish the detestable lettres de cachet, but merely endeavour to find some means of superseding them. The odious prisons of state, the Bastille, &c., were to remain. This was all that Necker, who dreamed that he was a great statesman, required the king to promise, when the whole country was ripe for a thorough cleansing, and knowing, as he did, that what the king promised solemnly the court laughed at as he promised, and would take the first opportunity of inducing him to retract.
But Necker was not able to obtain even so much from the king. We have seen that the king was called away to counsel with the queen and the princes, and the result we shall immediately see. It was resolved, in the first place, to postpone the royal seance from Monday the 22nd, to Tues-
