blood, had become, by one of those ironies in which the gods delight, the idol of the national movement. He was pitifully inferior to such an opportunity, empty of courage, empty of decision, and almost empty of comprehension. No idea informed him unless it was that of some vague financial “liberalism” (rather, say, moral anarchy) suitable to the crooked ways by which he himself had arrived. Those protruding eyes, that loose mouth, and that lethargic, self-satisfied expression were the idol that stood in the general mind for the giant things that were coming. Behind such cold dross was reddening the creative fire of the nation! Such a doorkeeper did Fate choose to open the gates for the armies of Marceau and Napoleon! All his advice was for something “constitutional.” In days better suited for such men as he Necker would have been a politician, and a parliamentary politician at that. To these, then, thus assembled entered the archbishops with their news. The news was this: that before sunset, just before they had left Versailles, the clergy had rallied to the commons. The bishops, indeed, all save four, had stood out for the privileged orders; but the doubt in which all minds had been since the revolutionary step of forty-eight hours before was resolved. The clergy had broken rank with the nobles; for that matter, many of the wealthier nobles were breaking rank, too. Decision was most urgent; the moment was critical in the extreme, lest in a few hours the National Assembly, already proclaimed, already half formed, should arise united and in full strength over against the crown. In not two hours after the arrival of the prelates the decision, nearly reached before they came, was finally taken by the king. He would follow Necker, and Necker was for a long, windy, complicated compromise. Necker was for a constitution, large, “liberal,” strangling the action of the popular life, dissolving the yes and no of creative creeds, leaving to the crown as much as would preserve its power to dismiss the States General and to summon a new body less national--and, above all, less violent. There is an English word for this temper, the word “Whig.” But that word is associated in the English language with the _triumph_ of wealth. Necker’s muddy vision did not triumph. That decision was taken upon this Friday night, the nineteenth of June, 1789--taken, I think, a little before midnight. Artois was off to bed, and Provence, too. The council was broken up. It was full midnight now when wheels were again heard upon the granite sets before the great doors, and the hot arrival of horses. The name announced was that of Talleyrand, the Bishop of Autun, and the king, perhaps angrily, refused to see him.