“You rejoice too soon.  Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despite of it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to them.”

A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to the announcement that had been so rapturously received.  Andre-Louis continued after a moment’s pause: 

“So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels, against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are now also rebels against their King.  Sooner than yield an inch of the unconscionable privileges by which too long already they have flourished, to the misery of a whole nation, they will make a mock of royal authority, hold up the King himself to contempt.  They are determined to prove that there is no real sovereignty in France but the sovereignty of their own parasitic faineantise.”

There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the audience remained silent, waiting.

“This is no new thing.  Always has it been the same.  No minister in the last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State, counselled the measures that we now demand as the only means of arresting our motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss, but found himself as a consequence cast out of office by the influence which Privilege brought to bear against him.  Twice already has M. Necker been called to the ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistent counsels of reform threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility.  For the third time now has he been called to office, and at last it seems we are to have States General in spite of Privilege.  But what the privileged orders can no longer prevent, they are determined to stultify.  Since it is now a settled thing that these States General are to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to it — unless we take measures to prevent them — by packing the Third Estate with their own creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that they convert. the States General into an instrument of their own will for the perpetuation of the abuses by which they live.  To achieve this end they will stop at nothing.  They have flouted the authority of the King, and they are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn them.  Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people as I am addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at the instigation of the nobility.  Their blood cries out for vengeance.”

Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.