On Monday, the 22d, the king held another council at Versailles. His two brothers, Count of Provence (Louis XVIII.) and Count d'Artois (Charles X.), with four other dignitaries of the privileged class, met with the council and took an active part in their deliberations. The project of Necker was here discussed and almost indignantly rejected. And yet the most earnest Royalists admit that it was extremely favorable to the privileged class, and no Republican can read it without being surprised that so much could then have been yielded by the people to aristocratic assumption.[117] But still this plan, in which Necker had gone to the utmost extreme of concession to propitiate the court, was peremptorily rejected, and another, insulting in its tone, imperious in its exactments, and utterly despotic in its principles, was adopted, and the Assembly was to be sternly dissolved. Necker remonstrated in vain, and at last, in mortification and despair, declared that he could not countenance such a message by his presence, and that he should be under the necessity of resigning his ministry. The feeble, vacillating king was in judgment and in heart with Necker, as were also one or two other of the ministers; but the queen, inheriting the spirit of Austrian despotism, acting through the two brothers of the king and the majority of the court, carried her point. This agitated discussion continued until midnight of Sunday, and then it was too late to propose the defiant message for the next day. The royal sitting was consequently postponed until Tuesday.[118] To prevent the Assembly from meeting in the tennis-court on Monday, where the curates could join them, the Count d'Artois sent word to the keeper that he wished for the tennis-court on that day to play. On Monday morning, when the Assembly, according to its adjournment, met at the door, they found the entrance guarded, and they were excluded under the plea that the Count d'Artois wished for the room for his own amusement. Thus an Assembly, now consisting of seven or eight hundred of the most illustrious men of France, the representatives of twenty-five millions of people, were driven again into the streets, because a young nobleman wished for their room that he might play a game of ball. Some of the younger deputies, exasperated by such treatment, were in favor of forcing an entrance. But armed bands, all under aristocratic officers, were parading the streets, bayonets glittered around the hall, and fifty thousand troops were within summons. The court did not disguise its merriment as it again contemplated the Assembly wandering houseless like vagabonds in the street. The nobles now felt exultant. They had compelled the king to adopt their plan. The Assembly was to be dismissed in disgrace, and an ample force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery was at hand to carry out their arrogant decree. They no longer feared the Assembly. They no longer hesitated openly to deride them.[119]