The French Aristocracy -- Priests, Lawyers, and Petty Nobles -- Burghers, Artisans, and Laborers -- Intelligent Curiosity of the Nation -- Exasperating Anachronisms -- Contrast of Demand and Resources -- The Great Nobles a Barrier to Reform -- Mistakes of the King -- The Estates Meet at Versailles -- The Court Party Provokes Violence -- Downfall of Feudal Privilege. [Sidenote: 1787-89.] At last the ideas of the century had declared open war on its institutions; their moral conquest was already coextensive with central and western Europe, but the first efforts toward their realization were to be made in France, for the reason that the line of least resistance was to be found not through the most downtrodden, but through the freest and the best instructed nation on the Continent. Both the clergy and the nobility of France had become accustomed to the absorption in the crown of their ancient feudal power. They were content with the great offices in the church, in the army, and in the civil administration, with exemption from the payment of taxes; they were happy in the delights of literature and the fine arts, in the joys of a polite, self-indulgent, and spendthrift society, so artificial and conventional that for most of its members a sufficient occupation was found in the study and exposition of its trivial but complex customs. The conduct and maintenance of a salon, the stage, gallantry; clothes, table manners, the use of the fan: these are specimens of what were considered not the incidents but the essentials of life.