His popularity with the Left and the bitterness of the Right were doubled when he said Mass for the last time on July 14th—the famous Mass of the Champ de Mars. Much has been written, in the way of sneers, on that famous ceremony, and Talleyrand’s share in it; much of it is clearly unjust. It must be remembered that the demonstration in the Champ de Mars was not a piece of ritual arbitrarily devised to satisfy the sooty citizens who had taken the Bastille. Before the end of the preceding year this collective demonstration and oath-taking had started in provincial towns. As the months of 1790 advanced Paris was piqued to hear that town after town was solemnly swearing loyalty to King and constitution—or constitution and King—without any lead from itself. In May Lyons sent word that it had conducted a most enthusiastic ceremony of the kind. Paris _must_ conclude and crown the series. The anniversary of the taking of the Bastille was divinely appointed for it, and the Champ de Mars provided. The municipality decreed it, and invited delegations from all parts of France. Clearly there were great moral possibilities in such an event. A banner could be raised there under which all parties could gather, except the extreme Right; and that banner might be—with embroideries and fringes—the banner of constitutionalism. As July 14th drew near everything pointed to the realisation of these hopes. Talleyrand was nominated by the King to preside episcopally at the function. He saw the theatre of the demonstration growing into shape during that marvellous fortnight: saw boys and girls, and university professors and curés, and prostitutes and countesses (among them his old friend, Mme. de Genlis, with a “mahogany barrow,” and a little model of the Bastille at her neck), and butchers and brigands and lawyers, decked with tricolours and cockades, digging and singing and wheeling barrows. It was a new “species of intoxication,” but most certainly it might mean a rally to a constitutional ideal, burned in by a blazing pageantry.