[124] In the meetings which followed that of Vizille, and which took place either at Grenoble or at St. Rambert or at Romans, the same union was maintained and drawn closer. The nobility and the clergy steadily demanded that the representatives of the commons should be doubled, taxation made equal, and the votes taken individually. The commons continued to express their gratitude. ‘I am instructed by my Order,’ said the Speaker of the Commons at one of these meetings (held at Romans, September 15th, 1788), ‘to repeat our thanks; we shall never forget your anxiety to do us justice.’ Similar compliments were renewed at an Assembly, also held at Romans on November 2nd, 1788. In a letter addressed to the Municipalities of Brittany, an inhabitant of Dauphiny writes: ‘I have seen the clergy and the nobility renounce with a fairness worthy of all respect their old pretensions in the States, and unanimously acknowledge the rights of the Commons. I could no longer doubt the salvation of the country.’ (‘Letters of Charles R---- to the Municipality of Brittany.’) CHAPTER IV. THE PARLIAMENTS DISCOVER THAT THEY HAVE LOST ALL AUTHORITY, JUST WHEN THEY THOUGHT THEMSELVES MASTERS OF THE KINGDOM. When the Royal authority had been conquered, the Parliaments at first conceived that the triumph was their own. They returned to the bench, less as reprieved delinquents than as conquerors, and thought that they had only to enjoy the sweets of victory. The King, when he withdrew the edicts which had raised to the bench new judges, ordered that at least the judgments and decrees of those judges should be maintained. The Parliaments declared that whatever had been adjudged without themselves was not adjudged at all. They summoned before them the insolent magistrates who had presumed to aspire to their seats, and, borrowing an old expression of mediæval law to meet this novel incident, they _noted them infamous_. All France saw that the King’s friends were punished for their fidelity to the Crown, and learnt that henceforth safety was not to be found on the side of obedience. The intoxication of these magistrates may easily be understood. Louis XIV. in all his glory had never been the object of more universal adulation, if that word can be applied to immoderate praise prompted by genuine and disinterested passions.