Then the 4th of May arrives. Chaos settles into order at Versailles. Talleyrand notes the petty devices by which royalism mitigates its concession of popular representation. On the previous day the King had received the deputies: first the Clergy and Nobles, then, with less ceremony, the Commons. He notes, too, how the leaders of the Commons are beginning to emphasize the distinction. “Three orders? No: three nations,” says Sieyès, constitution-maker for the next ten years. Now they march to the _Salle des menus_, all Paris lining the route or hanging out of the windows. Talleyrand sees the 550 popular deputies greeted with a roar of applause; mostly lawyers, with set faces under their “slouch-hats.” He sees the plumed and embroidered nobles, “the illustrious obscure,” tread daintily between silent hedges of soldiers and people. He marks the same silence as he and his forty colleagues in violet cassock and lace surplice step out, followed, with a convenient band between, by 260 curés. He hears the shouts of _Vive le Roi_ in the rear: the Queen is ignored. Even in the intoxication of the spectacle and its symbolism the people discriminate conspicuously. The next day he is interested to hear the King express his pleasure that the privileged “are going to renounce their privileges” and Necker rub in the lesson. And he notices that first innovation in the history of France, when commoners put their hats on before the King has got out of the room. It is the first shot. On the third day the Third Estate finds itself alone in the great hall. The clergy and the nobility are meeting separately, as of old, to verify their papers. The commoners see that this means separate votes and impotence, and the historic battle begins.