to two years of the tax voted and the requirement that at the end of that time the states-general should be convoked.  “Whilst the chancellor was thus speaking,” says Masselin, “many deputies of a more independent spirit kept groaning, and all the hall resounded with a slight murmuring because it seemed that he was not expressing himself well as to the power and liberty of the people.”  The deputies asked leave to deliberate in the afternoon, promising a speedy answer.  “As you wish to deliberate, do so, but briefly,” said the chancellor; “it would be better for you to hold counsel now so as to answer in the afternoon.”  The deputies took their time; and the discussion was a long and a hot one.  “We see quite well how it is,” said the princes and the majority of the great lords; “to curtail the king’s power, and pare down his nails to the quick, is the object of your efforts; you forbid the subjects to pay their prince as much as the wants of the state require:  are they masters, pray, and no longer subjects?  You would set up the laws of some fanciful monarchy, and abolish the old ones.”  “I know the rascals,” said one of the great lords [according to one historian, it was the Duke of Bourbon, Anne de Beaujeu’s brother-in-law]; “if they are not kept down by over-weighting them, they will soon become insolent; for my part, I consider this tax the surest curb for holding them in.”  “Strange words,” says Masselin, “unworthy of utterance from the mouth of a man so eminent; but in his soul, as in that of all old men, covetousness had increased with age, and he appeared to fear a diminution of his pension.”

After having deliberated upon it, the states-general persisted in their vote of a tax of twelve hundred thousand livres, at which figure it had stood under King Charles VII., but for two years only, and as a gift or grant, not as a permanent talliage any more, and on condition that at the end of that time the states should be necessarily convoked.  At the same time, however, “and over and above this, the said estates, who do desire the well-being, honor, prosperity, and augmentation of the lord king and of his kingdom, and in order to obey him and please him in all ways possible, do grant him the sum of three hundred thousand livres of Tours, for this once only, and without being a precedent, on account of his late joyful accession to the throne of France, and for to aid and support the outlay which it is suitable to make for his holy consecration, coronation, and entry into Paris.”

On this fresh vote, full of fidelity to the monarchy and at the same time of patriotic independence, negotiations began between the estates and the court; and they lasted from the 28th of February to the 12th of March, but without result.  At bottom, the question lay between absolute power and free government, between arbitrariness and legality; and, on this field, both parties were determined not to accept a serious and final defeat.  Unmoved by the loyal concessions