"Go and tell your master," cried Mirabeau, "that we are here at the
command of the people, and nothing but the bayonet shall drive us hence."

"You are to-day," added Sieyes, calmly, "what you were yesterday. Let us
deliberate."

The assembly, full of resolution and dignity, began the debate
accordingly. On the motion of Camus, it was determined to persist in the
decrees already made; and upon that of Mirabeau the inviolability of the
members of the assembly was decreed.

On that day the royal authority was lost. The initiative in law and moral
power passed from the monarch to the assembly. Those who, by their
counsels, had provoked this resistance, did not dare to punish it. Necker,
whose dismissal had been decided on that morning, was, in the evening,
entreated by the queen and Louis XVI. to remain in office. This minister
had disapproved of the royal sitting, and, by refusing to be present at
it, he again won the confidence of the assembly, which he had lost through
his hesitation. The season of disgrace was for him the season of
popularity. By this refusal he became the ally of the assembly, which
determined to support him. Every crisis requires a leader, whose name
becomes the standard of his party; while the assembly contended with the
court, that leader was Necker.

At the first sitting, that part of the clergy which had united with the
assembly in the church of Saint Louis, again sat with it; a few days
after, forty-seven members of the nobility, among whom was the duke of
Orleans, joined them; and the court was itself compelled to invite the
nobility, and a minority of the clergy, to discontinue a dissent that