His eldest son, the Duc de Chartres,[4] was now a boy of sixteen, and he had proposed to the king to give him Madame Royale in marriage; an idea which the queen, who held his character in deserved abhorrence, had rejected with very decided marks of displeasure.

He was also stimulated by views of personal ambition.

The history of England had been recently studied by many persons in France besides the king and queen; and there were not wanting advisers to point out to the duke that the revolution which had taken place in England exactly a century before had owed its success to the dethronement of the reigning sovereign and the substitution of another member of the royal family in his place.

As William of Orange was, after the king's own children, the next heir to James II., so was the Duc d'Orleans now the next heir, after the king's children and brothers, to Louis XVI.; and for the next five months there can be no doubt that he and his partisans, who numbered in their body some of the most influential members of the States- general, kept constantly in view the hope of placing him on the throne from which they were to depose his cousin.
The next day the States were formally opened by Louis in person.

The place of meeting was a spacious hall which, two years before, had been used for the meeting of the Notables.