he
popular minister of finance, was recalled, and prepared everything for
the election of deputies and the holding of the States.

A religious ceremony preceded their installation. The king, his family,
his ministers, the deputies of the three orders, went in procession from
the Church of Notre Dame to that of St. Louis, to hear the opening mass.

The royal sitting took place the following day in the Salle des Menus.
Galleries, arranged in the form of an amphitheatre, were filled with
spectators. The deputies were summoned, and introduced according to the
order established in 1614. The clergy were conducted to the right, the
nobility to the left, and the commons in front of the throne at the end
of the hall. The deputations from Dauphine, from Crepy-en-Valois, to
which the Duke of Orleans belonged, and from Provence, were received
with loud applause. Necker was also received on his entrance with
general enthusiasm.

Barentin, keeper of the seals, spoke next after the king. His speech
displayed little knowledge of the wishes of the nation, or it sought
openly to combat them. The dissatisfied assembly looked to M. Necker,
from whom it expected different language.

The court, so far from wishing to organise the States-General, sought to
annul them. No efforts were spared to keep the nobility and clergy
separate from and in opposition to the commons; but on May 6, the day
after the opening of the States, the nobility and clergy repaired to
their respective chambers, and constituted themselves. The Third Estate
being, on account of its double representation, the most numerous order,
had the Hall of the States allotted to it, and there awaited the two
other orders; it considered its situation as provisional, its members as
presumptive deputies, and adopted a system of inactivity till the other
orders should unite with it. Then a memorable struggle began, the issue
of which was to decide whether the revolution should be effected or
stopped.

The commons, having finished the verification of their own powers of
membership on June 17, on the motion of Sieyes, constituted themselves
the National Assembly, and refused to recognise the other two orders
till they submitted, and changed the assembly of the States into an
assembly of the people.

It was decided that the king should go in state to the Assembly, annul
its decrees, command the separation of the orders as constitutive of the
monarchy, and himself fix the reforms to