edy. Calonne also shall have trial! With a
genius for persuading--before all things for borrowing; after three
years of which, expedient heaped on expedient, the pile topples
perilous.

Whereupon a new expedient once more astonishes the world, unheard of
these hundred and sixty years--_Convocation of the Notables_. A round
gross of notables, meeting in February, 1787; all privileged persons. A
deficit so enormous! Mismanagement, profusion, is too clear; peculation
itself is hinted at. Calonne flies, storm-driven, over the horizon. To
whom succeeds Lomenie-Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse--adopting
Calonne's plans, as Calonne had proposed to adopt Turgot's; and the
notables are, as it were, organed out in kind of choral anthem of
thanks, praises, promises.

Lomenie issues conciliatory edicts, fiscal edicts. But if the Parlement
of Paris refuse to register them? As it does, entering complaints
instead. Lomenie launches his thunderbolt, six score _lettres de
cachet;_ the Parlement is trundled off to Troyes, in Champagne, for a
month. Yet two months later, when a royal session is held, to have
edicts registered, there is no registering. Orleans, "Equality" that is
to be, has made the protest, and cut its moorings.

The provincial parlements, moreover, back up the Paris Parlement with
its demand for a States-General. Lomenie hatches a cockatrice egg; but
it is broken in premature manner; the plot discovered and denounced.
Nevertheless, the Parlement is dispersed by D'Agoust with Gardes
Francaises and Gardes Suisses. Still, however, will none of the
provincial parlements register.

Deputations coming from Brittany meet to take counsel, being refused
audience; become the _Breton Club_, first germ of the _Jacobins'
Society_. Lomenie at last announces that the States-General shall meet
in the May of next year (1789). For the holding of which, since there is
no known plan, "thinkers are invited" to furnish one.

_II.---The States-General_

Wherewith Lomenie departs; flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as
weighty a mischief. The archbishop is thrown out, and M. Necker is
recalled. States-General will meet, if not in January, at least in May.
But how to form it? On the model of the last States-General in 1614,
says the Parlement, which means that the _Tiers Etat_ will be of no
account, if the noblesse and the clergy agree. Wherewith terminates the
popularity of the Parlement. As for the "thinkers," it is a sheer
snowi