of things no longer to be tolerated by an enlightened generation of philosophers.  M. le Comte de Lafayette, who had supported the motion, left the Assembly as plain M. Motier, the great tribune Count Mirabeau became plain M. Riquetti, and M. le Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr just simple M. Lesarques.  The thing was done in one of those exaltations produced by the approach of the great National Festival of the Champ de Mars, and no doubt it was thoroughly repented on the morrow by those who had lent themselves to it.  Thus, although law by now, it was a law that no one troubled just yet to enforce.

That, however, is by the way.  The time, as I have said, was September, the day dull and showery, and some of the damp and gloom of it seemed to have penetrated the long Hall of the Manege, where on their eight rows of green benches elliptically arranged in ascending tiers about the space known as La Piste, sat some eight or nine hundred of the representatives of the three orders that composed the nation.

The matter under debate by the constitution-builders was whether the deliberating body to succeed the Constituent Assembly should work in conjunction with the King, whether it should be periodic or permanent, whether it should govern by two chambers or by one.

The Abbe Maury, son of a cobbler, and therefore in these days of antitheses orator-in-chief of the party of the Right — the Blacks, as those who fought Privilege’s losing battles were known — was in the tribune.  He appeared to be urging the adoption of a two-chambers system framed on the English model.  He was, if anything, more long-winded and prosy even than his habit; his arguments assumed more and more the form of a sermon; the tribune of the National Assembly became more and more like a pulpit; but the members, conversely, less and less like a congregation.  They grew restive under that steady flow of pompous verbiage, and it was in vain that the four ushers in black satin breeches and carefully powdered heads, chain of office on their breasts, gilded sword at their sides, circulated in the Piste, clapping their hands, and hissing

“Silence!  En place!”

Equally vain was the intermittent ringing of the bell by the president at his green-covered table facing the tribune.  The Abbe Maury had talked too long, and for some time had failed to interest the members.  Realizing it at last, he ceased, whereupon the hum of conversation became general.  And then it fell abruptly.  There was a silence of expectancy, and a turning of heads, a craning of necks.  Even the group of secretaries at the round table below the president’s dais roused themselves from their usual apathy to consider this young man who was mounting the tribune of the Assembly for the first time.

“M.  Andre-Louis Moreau, deputy suppleant, vice Emmanuel Lagron, deceased, for Ancenis in the Department of the Loire.”