Busy is the French world!  In those great days, what poorest speculative craftsman but will leave his workshop; if not to vote, yet to assist in voting?  On all highways is a rustling and bustling.  Over the wide surface of France, ever and anon, through the spring months, as the Sower casts his corn abroad upon the furrows, sounds of congregating and dispersing; of crowds in deliberation, acclamation, voting by ballot and by voice,—­rise discrepant towards the ear of Heaven.  To which political phenomena add this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and also Bread getting dear; for before the rigorous winter there was, as we said, a rigorous summer, with drought, and on the 13th of July with destructive hail.  What a fearful day! all cried while that tempest fell.  Alas, the next anniversary of it will be a worse. (Bailly, Memoires, i. 336.) Under such aspects is France electing National Representatives.

The incidents and specialties of these Elections belong not to Universal, but to Local or Parish History:  for which reason let not the new troubles of Grenoble or Besancon; the bloodshed on the streets of Rennes, and consequent march thither of the Breton ‘Young Men’ with Manifesto by their ‘Mothers, Sisters and Sweethearts;’ (Protestation et Arrete des Jeunes Gens de la Ville de Nantes, du 28 Janvier 1789, avant leur depart pour Rennes.  Arrete des Jeunes Gens de la Ville d’Angers, du 4 Fevrier 1789.  Arrete des Meres, Soeurs, Epouses et Amantes des Jeunes Citoyens d’Angers, du 6 Fevrier 1789. (Reprinted in Histoire Parlementaire, i. 290-3.)) nor suchlike, detain us here.  It is the same sad history everywhere; with superficial variations.  A reinstated Parlement (as at Besancon), which stands astonished at this Behemoth of a States-General it had itself evoked, starts forward, with more or less audacity, to fix a thorn in its nose; and, alas, is instantaneously struck down, and hurled quite out,—­for the new popular force can use not only arguments but brickbats!  Or else, and perhaps combined with this, it is an order of Noblesse (as in Brittany), which will beforehand tie up the Third Estate, that it harm not the old privileges.  In which act of tying up, never so skilfully set about, there is likewise no possibility of prospering; but the Behemoth-Briareus snaps your cords like green rushes.  Tie up?  Alas, Messieurs!  And then, as for your chivalry rapiers, valour and wager-of-battle, think one moment, how can that answer?  The plebeian heart too has red life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of you; and ’the six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for seventy-two hours, in the Cordeliers’ Cloister, at Rennes,’—­have to come out again, wiser than they entered.  For the Nantes Youth, the Angers Youth, all Brittany was astir; ‘mothers, sisters and sweethearts’ shrieking after them, March!  The Breton Noblesse must even let the mad world have its way. (Hist.  Parl. i. 287.  Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 105-128.)