of procuring money now compelled the king arbitrarily to register a royal edict, which met with strong opposition from the parliament. This body was then banished to Troyes, but again recalled in the month of September. In 1788, M. de Brienne, weary of combating the difficulties of his office, resigned in favor of M. Necker. This gentleman, as the first act of his second ministry, proposed to convoke the states-general, and on the 5th of May, 1789, that august assembly filled the Hall de Menus in the Palace of Versailles. The king, in a brief speech, spoke hopefully of the present and the future, trusted that his reign might be commemorated henceforth by the happiness and prosperity of his people, and welcomed the states-general to his palace. Unforeseeing and placid, he beheld in this meeting nothing but the promise of amelioration, nor guessed how little prepared for usefulness or decision were its twelve hundred. It soon became evident that the real strength of the states-general lay in the commons. They formed the third estate, and numbered as many members as the clergy and noblesse together. They took upon themselves to decide whether the deliberations of the Assembly should be carried on in three chambers or one—they covered their heads in presence of the king—they constituted themselves the “National Assembly,” and invited the clergy and aristocracy to join them. The timid sovereign sanctioned these innovations, and the Assembly proceeded to exercise its self-conferred functions. Supplies were voted for the army; the public debt was consolidated; a provisional collection of taxes was decreed; and the inviolability of the members proclaimed. In the meantime the nobles, headed by the king’s second brother, the Count d’Artois, were collecting in the neighborhood of the court and capital such troops as they could muster from every quarter of the kingdom. Necker was exiled, and it became evident that the king’s imprudent advisers had counselled him to have recourse to violence. Paris, long prepared for insurrection, rose _en masse_. Necker alone had possessed the confidence of the citizens, and his dismissal gave the signal for arms. Camille Desmoulins, a young and enthusiastic patriot, harangued the populace at the Palais Royal.