Let us be correct; the Communes did not obtain at once the audience that they demanded on account of the difficulties of the ceremonial.  They would have wished to make the Third Estate speak kneeling.  “This custom,” said M. de Barentin, “has existed from time immemorial, and if the king wished....”  “And if twenty-five millions of men do not wish it,” exclaimed Bailly, interrupting the minister, “where are the means to force them?” “The two privileged orders,” replied the Guard of the Seals, somewhat stunned by the apostrophe, “no longer require the Third Estate to bend the knee; but, after having formerly possessed immense privileges in the ceremonial, they limit themselves now to asking some difference.  This difference I cannot find.”  “Do not take the trouble to seek for it,” replied the President hastily:  “however slight the difference might be, the Communes will not suffer it.”

This digression was required through a grave and recent error.  The memory of Bailly will not suffer by it, since it has afforded me the opportunity of establishing, beyond any reply, that in our fellow academician a noble firmness was on occasions allied to urbanity, mildness, and politeness.  But what will be said of the puerilities which I have been obliged to recall, of the mean pretensions of the courtiers on the eve of an immense revolution?  When the Greeks of the Lower Empire, instead of going on the ramparts valiantly to repel the attacks of the Turks, remained night and day collected around some sophists in their lyceums and academies, their sterile debates at least related to some intellectual questions; but at Versailles, there was nothing in action, on the part of two out of three orders, but the most miserable vanity.

By an express arrangement, decreed from the beginning, among the Members of the Communes, the Dean or President had to be renewed every week.  Notwithstanding the incessant representations of Bailly, this legislative article was long neglected, so fortunate did the Assembly feel in having at their head this eminent man, who to undeniable knowledge, united sincerity, moderation, and a degree of patriotism not less appreciated.

He thus presided over the Third Estate on the memorable days that determined the march of our great revolution.

On the 17th of June, for instance, when the Deputies of the Communes, worn out with the tergiversations of the other two orders, showed that in case of need they would act without their concurrence, and resolutely adopted the title of National Assembly,—­they provided against presumed projects of dissolution, by stamping as illegal all levies of contribution which were not granted by the Assembly.

Again, on the 20th of June, when the Members of the National Assembly, affronted at the Hall having been closed and their meetings suspended without an official notification, with only the simple form of placards and public criers, as if a mere theatre was in question, they assembled at a tennis-court, and “took an oath never to separate, but to assemble wherever circumstances might render it requisite, until the Constitution of the Kingdom should be established and confirmed on solid foundations.”