48 Jeanette Needham. 
nobility, we swear to Your Majesty in its name, an unlimited 
gratitude and an inviolable fidelity to your sacred person, to 
your legitimate authority and your august house. These senti- 
ments, Sire, are, and will be forever, those of the order of the 
nobility. Why is it necessary that sorrow should be mingled 
with the sentiments with which it is filled!” 
Then the speech dealt with the point at issue between king 
and nobility, the plan for the verification of credentials: “‘The 
ministers of Your Majesty presented to the conferences in your 
name a plan of conciliation. Your Majesty asked that it be 
accepted, or some other; you permitted that fitting precautions 
be added to it. The order of the nobility has taken them, Sire, 
in harmony with true principles; it has presented its decree to 
Your Majesty; and it is this decree that Your Majesty appears to 
have seen with sorrow. Your Majesty would have desired to 
find more deference there .... Ah, Sire, it is to your heart 
alone that the order of nobility appeals. Deeply touched, but 
ever faithful, always pure in our motives, always true in our 
principles we will preserve, without doubt, claims to your kind- 
ness; your personal virtues ever build up our hopes.”’ 
The crimes of the third estate were next emphasized: ‘The 
deputies of the order of the third estate have believed that 
they could concentrate in themselves alone the authority of the 
estates-general. Without awaiting the concurrence of the other 
two orders and the sanction of Your Majesty, they have believed 
that they could convert their decrees into law; they have ordered 
that they be printed and distributed in the provinces; they have 
declared null and illegal taxes actually existing; they have con- 
sented provisionally for the nation to the limitation of the 
duration of these taxes. Without doubt, they have thought 
that they could assume rights vested in the king and the three 
orders.”’ 
Against such illegal procedure, they appealed to the king, 
basing their plea, not upon self-interest, but upon the interests 
of all: ‘‘It is in the hands of Your Majesty that we place our 
protestation and opposition to such pretensions. If the rights 
which we defend were purely personal, if they concerned only 
the nobility, our zeal in claiming them, our constancy in up- 
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