and workmen in
possession. This was the contemptuous manner in which the Court chose
to intimate to them that preparations were being made for a royal
session which was to take place two days later. Alarmed and indignant,
the deputies proceeded to the palace tennis court close by,--the _Jeu
de Paume_,--and there heated discussion followed. Sieyes, for once in
his career imprudent, proposed that the Assembly should remove to
Paris. Mounier, conservative at heart, realizing that this meant civil
war, temporized, and carried the Assembly with him by proposing a
solemn oath whereby those present would pledge themselves not to
separate until they had endowed France with a constitution.

On the 23rd, the royal session was held. A great display of troops and
of ceremony was made. The deputies assembled in the hall, and {57} the
King's speech was read. It was a carefully prepared document,
announcing noteworthy concessions as well as noteworthy reservations,
but vitiated by two things: the concessions came just too late; the
reservations were not promptly and effectively enforced. The King
declared that for two months past the States-General had accomplished
nothing save wrangling, that the time had therefore arrived for
recalling them to their duties. His royal will was that the
distinction between the three orders should be maintained, and after
announcing a number of financial and other reforms, he ordered the
deputies to separate at once. The King then left the hall supported by
his attendants, and by the greater part of the nobles and high clergy.
There followed a memorable scene, to understand which it is necessary
to go back a little.

On the arrival of the deputies at Versailles, they had at once tended
to form themselves into groups, messes, or clubs, for eating, social
and political purposes. An association of this kind, the Club Breton,
so called from the province of its founders, soon assumed considerable
importance. Here the forward men of the assembly met and discussed;
and here, filtering through innumerable channels, came {58} the news of
the palace, the tittle tattle of Trianon and the Oeuil de Boeuf, the
decisions of the King's council. At every crisis during the struggle
at Versailles, the leaders of the assembly knew beforehand what the
King and his ministers thought, and what measures they had decided on.
All that was necessary therefore was to concert secretly the step most
likely to thwart