ates themselves to determine it; trusting,
against all probability, that, after having thus given the Commons the
power to enforce their own views, he should be able to persuade them to
abandon the same in deference to his judgment.

Louis, as a matter of course, adopted his advice; and, after several
different towns--Blois, Tours, Cambrai, and Compiegne among them--had been
proposed as the place of meeting, he himself decided in favor of
Versailles,[20] as that which would afford him the best hunting while the
session lasted. The queen in her heart disapproved of every one of these
resolutions. She saw that Necker had, as she had foreboded, sacrificed the
king's authority by his advice on the two first questions; and she
perceived more clearly than any one the danger of fixing the States-
general so near to Paris that the turbulent population of the city should
be able to overawe the members. She pressed these considerations earnestly
on the king,[21] but it was characteristic of the course which she
prescribed to herself from, the beginning, and from which she never
swerved, that when her advice was overruled she invariably defended the
course which had been taken. Her language, when any one spoke to her
either of her own opinions and wishes, or of the feelings with which the
different classes of the nation regarded her, was invariably the same.
"You are not to think of me for a moment. All that I desire of you is to
take care that the respect which is due to the king shall not be
weakened;[22]" and it was only her most intimate friends who knew how
unwise she thought the different decisions that had been adopted, or how
deep were her forebodings of evil.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Reveillon Riot.--Opening of the States-general.--The Queen is insulted
by the Partisans of the Duc d'Orleans.--Discussions as to the Number of
Chambers.--Career and Character of Mirabeau.--Necker rejects his Support.
--He determines to revenge himself.--Death of the Dauphin.

The meeting of the States-general, as has been already seen, was fixed for
the 4th of May, 1789; and, as if it were fated that the bloody character
of the period now to be inaugurated should be displayed from the very
outset, the elections for the city of Paris, which were only held in the
preceding week, were stained with a riot so formidable as to be commonly
spoken of in the records of the time as an insurrection.[1]

One of the candidates for the representati