Insolvency came within a decade after Turgot’s fall, as Turgot had demonstrated that it must come, and an insolvency immediately precipitated by the rapacity of the court which had most need of caution.  The future Louis XVIII, for example, who was then known as the Comte de Provence, on one occasion, when the government had made a loan, appropriated a quarter of it, laughingly observing, “When I see others hold out their hands, I hold out my hat.”  In 1787 the need for money became imperative, and, not daring to appeal to the nation, the King convoked an assembly of “notables,” that is to say of the privileged.  Calonne, the minister, proposed pretty much the measures of Turgot, and some of these measures the “notables” accepted, but the Parliament of Paris again intervened and declined to register the laws.  The Provincial Parliaments followed the Parliament of Paris.  After this the King had no alternative but to try the experiment of calling the States-General.  They met on May 4, 1789, and instantly an administrative system, which no longer rested upon a social centre of gravity, crumbled, carrying the judiciary with it.  At first the three estates sat separately.  If this usage had continued, the Clergy and the Nobles combined would have annulled every measure voted by the Commons.  For six weeks the Commons waited.  Then on June 10, the Abbe Sieyes said, “Let us cut the cable.  It is time.”  So the Clergy and the Nobility were summoned, and some of the Clergy obeyed.  This sufficed.  On motion of Sieyes, the Commons proclaimed themselves the National Assembly, and the orders fused.  Immediately caste admitted defeat and through its mouthpiece, the King, commanded the Assembly to dissolve.  The Commons refused to dissolve, and the Nobles prepared for a coup d’etat. The foreign regiments, in the pay of the government, were stationed about Paris, while the Bastille, which was supposed to be impregnable, was garrisoned with Swiss.  In reply, on July 14, 1789, the citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille.  An unstable social equilibrium had been already converted by pressure into a revolution.  Nevertheless, excentric as the centre of gravity had now become, it might have been measurably readjusted had the privileged classes been able to reason correctly from premise to conclusion.  Men like Lafayette and Mirabeau still controlled the Assembly, and if the King and the Nobility had made terms, probably the monarchy might have been saved, certainly the massacres would have been averted.  As a decaying class is apt to do, the Nobility did that which was worst for themselves.  Becoming at length partly conscious of a lack of physical force in France to crush the revolution, a portion of the nobility, led by the Comte d’Artois, the future Charles X, fled to Germany to seek for help abroad, while the bolder remained to plan an attack on the rebellion.  On October 1, 1789, a great military banquet was given at Versailles.  The King and Queen with the Dauphin were present.  A royalist