This was worse than amiable weakness, it was rank republicanism; the more dangerous because, as one of the ministers said, "all his logic is in action." The queen, who had never more than half liked him, began to distrust him. Calonne, who was about to leave the treasury in such a muddle, declared that he ought to be shut up in the Bastille; and a remark that Lafayette was overheard to make one day when the education of the dauphin was under discussion did not add to his popularity with the court party. "I think," he said, "that the prince will do well to begin his study of French history with the year 1787." One day he had the hardihood to raise his voice and say, "I appeal to the king to convene a national assembly." There was a hush of astonishment and of something very like fear. "What!" cried a younger brother of the king, the Comte d'Artois, who presided over the section of which Lafayette was a member. "You demand the convocation of [Pg 189]the States General?" "Yes, Sire." "You wish to go on record? To have me say to the king that M. de Lafayette has made a motion to convene the States General?" "Yes, Monseigneur--and better than that!" by which Lafayette meant he hoped such an assembly might be made more truly representative than ever before. That Lafayette realized the personal consequences of his plain speaking there is no doubt. He wrote to Washington, "The king and his family, as well as the notables who surround him, with the exception of a few friends, do not pardon the liberties I have taken or the success I have gained with other classes of society." If he cherished any illusions, they were dispelled a few months later when he received a request from the king to give up his commission as major-general. As for his appeal for a meeting of the States General, nobody possessed the hardihood to sign it with him, and it had no immediate consequences. Before the Assembly of Notables adjourned it advised the king to authorize legislative assemblies in the provinces, which he did, Lafayette being one of the five men named by the monarch to represent the nobility in his province of Auvergne. At the sessions of this provincial assembly he further displeased the members of his own class, but the common people crowded about and applauded him wherever he went. "He was the first hero they had seen, and they were never tired of looking at him," a local chronicler states, with disarming frankness.