The year 1790 brought to completion the measures outlined by the year 1789. The property of the Church, first placed in the hands of the nation, was confiscated, the civil constitution of the clergy decreed, the nobility abolished. [Sidenote: The Federation of July.] I did not attend the Federation of July 1790: a somewhat serious illness made me keep my bed; but before that I had been much amused by the sight of the wheel-barrows on the Champ de Mars. Madame de Staël has written a wonderful description of that scene[401]. I shall always regret not to have seen M. de Talleyrand say Mass, served by the Abbé Louis[402], as I regret not to have seen him, sword at side, give audience to the Ambassador of the Grand Turk. Mirabeau forfeited his popularity in the year 1790; his relations with the Court were obvious. M. Necker resigned office and withdrew into private life, none caring to restrain him[403]. Mesdames, the King's aunts, left for Rome with a passport from the National Assembly[404]. The Duc d'Orléans returned from England and declared himself the King's most humble and most obedient servant. Societies of Friends of the Constitution multiplied upon the soil and connected themselves with the parent society, receiving its suggestions and executing its orders. Public life met with a favourable disposition in my character: I was attracted by what happened in public, because, in the crowd, I beheld my loneliness and had no occasion to combat my shyness. Nevertheless, the salons, sharing as they did in the universal agitation, had become a little less foreign to my mood, and I had made new acquaintances in spite of myself. The Marquise de Villette I had met casually. Her husband[405], who bore a slandered reputation, wrote with Monsieur, the King's brother, in the _Journal de Paris._ Madame de Villette, still charming, lost a daughter of sixteen, more charming than her mother, upon whom the Chevalier de Parny wrote some verses worthy of the Anthology[406]. My regiment, which was in garrison at Rouen, preserved its discipline pretty late. It had an encounter with the mob on the subject of the execution of the actor Bordier[407], who underwent the last sentence pronounced by the parliamentary power; hanged one day, he would have been a hero the next, had he lived twenty-four hours longer. But at last the insurrection showed itself among the soldiers of the Navarre Regiment. The Marquis de Mortemart emigrated; his officers followed him. I had neither adopted nor rejected the new opinions; I was as little disposed to attack as to serve them, was unwilling either to emigrate or to continue in the military career, and I resigned my commission.