The mode of action corresponded with this insufficient language.  Crushed beneath the burden of past defaults and errors, the government tendered its abdication, in advance, into the hands of that mightily bewildered Assembly it had just convoked.  The king had left the verification of powers to the States-general themselves.  M. Necker confined himself to pointing out the possibility of common action between the three orders, recommending the deputies to examine those questions discreetly.  “The king is anxious about your first deliberations,” said the minister, throwing away at haphazard upon leaders as yet unknown the direction of those discussions which he with good reason dreaded.  “Never did political assembly combine so great a number of remarkable men,” says M. Malouet, “without there being a single one whose superiority was decided and could command the respect of the others.  Such abundance of stars rendered this assembly unmanageable, as they will always be in France when there is no man conspicuous in authority and in force of character to seize the helm of affairs or to have the direction spontaneously surrendered to him.  Fancy, then, the state of a meeting of impassioned men, without rule or bridle, equally dangerous from their bad and their good qualities, because they nearly all lacked experience and a just appreciation of the gravity of the circumstances under which they were placed; insomuch that the good could do no good, and the bad, from levity, from violence, did nearly always more harm than they intended.”

It was amidst such a chaos of passions, wills, and desires, legitimate or culpable, patriotic or selfish, that there was, first of all, propounded the question of verification of powers.  Prompt and peremptory on the part of the noblesse, hesitating and cautions on the part of the clergy, the opposition of the two upper orders to any common action irritated the third estate; its appeals had ended in nothing but conferences broken off, then resumed at the king’s desire, and evidently and painfully to no purpose.  “By an inconceivable oversight on the part of M. Necker in the local apportionment of the building appointed for the assembly of the States-general, there was the throne-room or room of the three orders, a room for the noblesse, one for the clergy, and none for the commons, who remained, quite naturally, established in the states-room, the largest, the most ornate, and all fitted up with tribunes for the spectators who took possession of the public boxes (loges communes) in the room.  When it was perceived that this crowd of strangers and their plaudits only excited the audacity of the more violent speakers, all the consequences of this installation were felt.  Would anybody believe,” continues M. Malouet, “that M. Necker had an idea of inventing a ground-slip, a falling-in of the cellars of the Menus, and of throwing down during the night the carpentry of the grand room, in order to remove and install the three orders separately?