O Triumvirate of Princes, new Garde-des-Sceaux Barentin, thou Home-Secretary Bréteuil, Duchess Polignac, and Queen eager to listen,—what is now to be done? This Third Estate will get in motion, with the force of all France in it; Clergy-machinery with Noblesse-machinery, which were to serve as beautiful counter-balances and drags, will be shamefully dragged after it,—and take fire along with it. What is to be done? The Œil-de-Bœuf waxes more confused than ever. Whisper and counter-whisper; a very tempest of whispers! Leading men from all the Three Orders are nightly spirited thither; conjurors many of them; but can they conjure this? Necker himself were now welcome, could he interfere to purpose. Let Necker interfere, then; and in the King’s name! Happily that incendiary “God-of-Peace” message is not yet _answered_. The Three Orders shall again have conferences; under this Patriot Minister of theirs, somewhat may be healed, clouted up;—we meanwhile getting forward Swiss Regiments, and a “hundred pieces of field-artillery.” This is what the Œil-de-Bœuf, for its part, resolves on. But as for Necker—Alas, poor Necker, thy obstinate Third Estate has one first-last word, _verification in common_, as the pledge of voting and deliberating in common! Half-way proposals, from such a tried friend, they answer with a stare. The tardy conferences speedily break up; the Third Estate, now ready and resolute, the whole world backing it, returns to its Hall of the Three Orders; and Necker to the Œil-de-Bœuf, with the character of a disconjured conjuror there—fit only for dismissal.[148] And so the Commons Deputies are at last on their own strength getting under way? Instead of Chairman, or Dean, they have now got a President: Astronomer Bailly. Under way, with a vengeance! With endless vociferous and temperate eloquence, borne on Newspaper wings to all lands, they have now, on this 17th day of June, determined that their name is not _Third Estate_, but—_National Assembly!_ They, then, are the Nation? Triumvirate of Princes, Queen, refractory Noblesse and Clergy, what, then, are _you?_ A most deep question;—scarcely answerable in living political dialects. All regardless of which, our new National Assembly proceeds to appoint a “committee of subsistences;” dear to France, though it can find little or no grain. Next, as if our National Assembly stood quite firm on its legs,—to appoint “four other standing committees;” then to settle the security of the National Debt; then that of the Annual Taxation: all within eight-and-forty hours. At such rate of velocity it is going: the conjurors of the Œil-de-Bœuf may well ask themselves, Whither? Chapter 1.5.II. Mercury de Brézé.