Those who have attended the ritual of assemblies know how superficial and imperfect is the effect of such a preliminary single reading. Men strain their ears for this point and for that, but they do not grasp the details of what has been put before them. What reaches from the lips of the reader to his audience is not, as in book-work, a precise and complete plan; it is only a general effect. Those thirty-five articles, droned out in the official accent, liberally as many of them were interpreted upon a further study, tolerably co-ordinated as they may have seemed to Necker and to those who drafted them in the clique of the council-chamber, were taken by the Commons as a direct challenge. And the Commons were right. The French Revolution was not permitted for politicians’ work of this kind. Flame is not made for pap. Yet challenging as Necker’s futilities were to the ardour of the time, it was not they that determined the gravity of that short hour. What determined it was the last and third speech of the king. Louis rose for the third time at the conclusion of this reading, and in brief sentences told them they had heard his will. He reminded them that they could do nothing without his specific approbation; he used the famous phrase that, if he were abandoned in his enterprise, “he would alone carry out the good of his peoples.” His last sentence was this: “I order you, gentlemen, to separate at once, and to-morrow to come each of you to the place set apart for your respective orders, there to resume your debates. To this effect I have ordered the Grand Master of Ceremonies to prepare the places where you are to meet.” During each brief interlude of the king’s own speaking all had preserved a profound attention. During the reading of the articles there had been now and then a slight applause, especially from certain of the nobles at the article in favour of the old feudal dues, and to that applause there had come isolated cries of “Silence!” from the Commons. Nothing else had disturbed the ease, the dignity, and the rapidity of this one hour pregnant with war: one hour; for it was eleven when the king first entered; as he rose to dismiss them and leave the hall it was noon. [Illustration: THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES, JUNE, 1789 _To face p. 39_ ] When the king had passed behind the glorious, roof-high curtains of the throne, and so gone out, there was a noise of men moving. All the three hundred of the nobility rose and followed him. A great number of the clergy--most of that order--trooped after. The hall was left desolate in its centre; most desolate where its great empty dais, splendid with the purple drapings and the embroidered lilies of gold, and the empty throne dominated the floor below.