openness he admired.  The question touching the composition of the king’s council and the part to be taken in it by the estates was for five weeks the absorbing idea with the government and with the assembly.  There were made, on both sides, concessions which satisfied neither the estates nor the court, for their object was always on the part of the estates to exercise a real influence on the government, and on the part of the court to escape being under any real influence of the estates.  Side by side with the question of the king’s council was ranged that of the imposts; and here it was no easier to effect an understanding:  the crown asked more than the estates thought they ought or were able to vote; and, after a long and obscure controversy about expenses and receipts, Masselin was again commissioned to set-before the king’s council the views of the assembly and its ultimate resolution.  “When we saw,” said he, “that the aforesaid accounts or estimates contained elements of extreme difficulty, and that to balance and verify them would subject us to interminable discussions and longer labor than would be to our and the people’s advantage, we hastened to adopt by way of expedient, but nevertheless resolutely, the decision I am about to declare to you. . . .  Wishing to meet liberally the king’s and your desires, we offer to pay the sum that King Charles VII. used to take for the impost of talliages, provided, however, that this sum be equally and proportionately distributed between the provinces of the kingdom, and that in the shape of an aid.  And this contribution be only for two years, after which the estates shall be assembled as they are to-day to discuss the public needs; and if at that time or previously they see the advantage thereof, the said sum shall be diminished or augmented.  Further, the said my lords the deputies do demand that their next meeting be now appointed and declared, and that an irrevocable decision do fix and decree that assembly.”

This was providing at one and the same time for the wants of the present and the rights of the future.  The impost of talliage was, indeed, voted just as it had stood under Charles VII., but it became a temporary aid granted for two years only; at the end of them the estates were to be convoked and the tax augmented or diminished according to the public wants.  The great question appeared decided; by means of the vote, necessary and at the same time temporary, in the case of the impost, the states-general entered into real possession of a decisive influence in the government; but the behavior and language of the officers of the crown and of the great lords of the court rendered the situation as difficult as ever.  In a long and confused harangue the chancellor, William de Rochefort, did not confine himself to declaring the sum voted, twelve hundred thousand livres, to be insufficient, and demanding three hundred thousand livres more; he passed over in complete silence the limitation