Using the title that was on all men’s lips and calling themselves the “_National Assembly_,” the commons had declared that the whole assembly was an indivisible body, and alone the organ of the nation. They had used with conscious purpose the solemn formula “Desires and decrees,” which hitherto throughout all these centuries had never appeared above any seal or signature save that of a king. They clothed this spiritual thing with body by the enormous decision that no tax should be paid in the kingdom that had not their approval. This was the blow that had summoned the council round the king at Marly upon this Friday night. For now two anxious days doubtful issues and conflicting policies had pulled Louis this way and that, whether to yield, whether to compromise, or whether to strike back. * * * * * It was a fortnight since the sickly child who was heir to the throne had died, and this retirement of the royal family to Marly, consequent upon such mourning, was confused by the numbness of that shock also. The king perhaps more than the queen had suffered in his powers and judgment; for Marie Antoinette, the most vigorous and lucid of those gathered in council at Marly, the least national, and the least wide in judgment, was active at this moment for the full claims of the crown. With her at the king’s side in the taking of this crucial decision stood other advisers. The king’s two brothers, the elder and the younger, who, as Louis XVIII and Charles X, were to rule after the restoration, and who were now known under the titles of Provence, and Artois were in the palace together. Provence, the elder, very dull and heartless, was the more solid; Artois, the younger, empty, poor in judgment, was the least unattractive. They counted for their rank, and even Provence for little else. Barentin was there, the keeper of the seals. He was a man of very clear decision, of straightforward speech and manner; a man with something sword-like about him. He thought and said that the king had only to move troops and settle matters at once. There also, lit by the candles of that night, was the vacuous, puffed face of Necker, the millionaire. This man, famous through his wealth, which was ill acquired and enormous, an alien in religion as in [Illustration: LOUIS-STANISLAS-XAVIER DE BOURBON, COMTE DE PROVENCE, AFTERWARD LOUIS XVIII From a photograph by Braun, Clément & Co., New York, of a painting by Jean-Martial Fredou, belonging to Marquis de Virieu, at the Château de Lantilly _To face p. 18_ ]