[Footnote 97: France and its Revolutions, by Geo. Long, Esq., p. 2.] [Footnote 98: M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 47.] [Footnote 99: Madame de Staël.] [Footnote 100: Histoire Parlementaire, vol. i., p. 356.] [Footnote 101: "Who would believe that this mad court remembered and regretted the absurd custom of making the Third Estate harangue on their knees? They were unwilling to dispense from this ceremony expressly, and preferred deciding that the President of the Third Estate should make no speech whatever."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 88.] [Footnote 102: Procès verbal des électeurs redigé par Bailly et Duveyrier, t. i., p. 34.] [Footnote 103: "The chairman was M. Bailly, a simple and virtuous man, an illustrious and modest cultivator of the sciences, who had been suddenly transported from the quiet studies of his closet into the midst of civil broils. Elected to preside over a great assembly, he had been alarmed at his new office, had deemed himself unworthy to fill it, and had undertaken it solely from a sense of duty. But, raised all at once to liberty, he found within him an unexpected presence of mind and firmness. Amid so many conflicts, he caused the majesty of the assembly to be respected, and represented it with all the dignity of virtue and reason."--_Thiers_, vol. i., p. 42.] [Footnote 104: Indignantly Desodoards exclaims, "The descendants of the Sicumbrians, or of I know not what savages, who ages ago came prowling from the forests of Germany, could they assume at the end of eighteen centuries that their blood was more pure than that which flowed in the veins of the descendants of the Gauls, or the Romans, the ancient inhabitants of France? Do they pretend that they are nobles because they are conquerors? Then we, being now more powerful, have only to drive them across the Rhine, and in our turn we shall be conquerors and consequently nobles."-_Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, Citoyen Français._] [Footnote 105: "What a spectacle for France! Six hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there on their elliptic benches longing passionately toward life, in painful durance, like souls waiting to be born. Speeches are spoken, eloquent, audible within doors and without. Mind agitates itself against mind; the nation looks on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the Commons deputies sit incubating."--_Carlyle_, vol. i., p. 148.] [Footnote 106: Bailly's Mémoires, t. i., p. 114.--_Dumont, Souvenirs, etc._, vol. i., p. 59.] [Footnote 107: "A month lost! One month in open famine. Observe that in this long expectation the rich kept themselves motionless, and postponed every kind of expenditure. Work had ceased. He who had but his hands, his daily labor to supply the day, went to look for work, found none--begged--got nothing--robbed. Starving gangs overran the country."--_Michelet_, vol. i., p. 93.]