In exitu Israel

by S. Baring-Gould

'To the church of S. Louis! Where more suitable to see the reunion of the orders?'

The cry was caught up and flung down the street,—

'To S. Louis!' and directly the mass of human beings began to move in that direction.

It was eleven o'clock before the Assembly was seated in the vast nave and choir of the cathedral church. The court had forgotten to close the churches, and thus the magnificent scheme of the Count of Artois and the Princes of Condé and Conté was defeated.

As soon as a table had been brought in from the sacristy, and the secretaries had taken their places, the minutes of the meeting in the tennis-court were read, and the president read a letter he had received from the king, at two o'clock in the morning, announcing the postponement of the royal session till the following day, and his determination that the great hall of the Menus should remain closed till then.

Several members who had been absent from the gathering at the tennis-court then took the oath and attached to it their signatures.

These preliminaries over, Bailly announced that the Clergy were about to arrive in a body at one o'clock, and formally unite with the Third Estate, and he requested those ecclesiastics who were then in the church to withdraw to the lodgings of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, where the majority of the house of the Clergy were to assemble.

Immediately all those delegates who had taken possession of the seats near the choir vacated them, to leave the place of honour free for the bishops and clergy.

The shouts and applause roaring in the square before the cathedral, like the advancing bore of the Ganges, announced to those within the sacred building the approach of the ecclesiastics. All rose to receive them as they entered and took their places in the choir, when with loud voice each of the one hundred and forty-nine who had signed the declaration of Friday, the 19th, answered to their roll-call, and verified their names. The names of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishop of Chartres, the Archbishop of Vienne, the Bishop of Rhodez, of Grégoire, and of Lindet, who were known to be strenuous adherents to the cause of liberty and justice, were received with thunders of applause.

Then the choir gates were thrown open, and the Archbishop of Vienne, followed by the clergy, descended to the nave to take their places in the National Assembly.