“Go tell those that sent you we are here by the will of the nation.” He added either that force alone (of bayonets or what-not) could drive the Commons out, or, as some say, that such force was powerless. Even as Mirabeau was speaking, Brézé, having had his answer from Bailly the official head of the Commons, thus recalcitrant, moved away. The custom of the court was on him, and he moved out backward with his white wand. Of the men who saw that piece of ritual, some said within themselves that the thing was a sign, and that sovereignty had passed from the Bourbons. When he had gone, there was silence again for a little while. It was broken by the workmen setting to their labour of dismantling the hall. Bailly ordered them to cease, and they obeyed the order. The genius of the French people for decision and for manifold co-operation appeared again and again throughout the Revolution, in debate, in street fighting, upon the battle-field. Nowhere did it appear more clearly than at this origin of all the movement. [Illustration: EMANUEL JOSEPH SIEYES _Député de la Ville de Paris à l’Assembleé Nationale en 1789 Elu Président le 7 Juin 1790_ A Paru, chez l’AUTEUR, Quay des Augustins Nº. 71 an 3ᵉ. EMMANUEL-JOSEPH SIEYÈS, DEPUTY FROM PARIS TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY] _To face p. 42_ Without traditional procedure, with no waiting on initiative from above, immediate, spontaneous and collective action decided all. One voice, proposing an adjournment until to-morrow, was voted down at once. Next Sieyès, with his firm, accurate mouth, pronounced a graven phrase expressing the mind of all: “You are to-day what you were yesterday.” Immediately, upon the motion of Camus, a man too legal, but well able to define, the Commons and such of the clergy as had remained with them voted unanimously their contradiction to the throne. They voted that all that they had passed, and all that they had done, they still maintained. As the hands which had been raised everywhere to vote this motion fell again, the corner of French history was turned; and those curious to choose a precise point at which the outset of any matter may be fixed, should choose that moment, the fall of those hundreds of hands, for the origin of modern Europe, its vast construction, its still imperilled experiment. One thing more remained to be done, though the general sense of those present did not at first grasp its necessity; the proposal and the carrying of it proceeded from the vivid sanity of Mirabeau. He it was who proposed that they should vote the inviolability of themselves, the deputies of the nation. To pass that decree meant that _if_ the Assembly should win, it would have, for the punishment of any that had attempted to defeat it by force, the awful weapon which a solemn declaration of intention gives. But it also meant that if the Commons were defeated, they had been guilty of treason.