And this contribution be only for two years, after which the estates shall be assembled as they are to-day to discuss the public needs; and if at that time or previously they see the advantage thereof, the said sum shall be diminished or augmented.

Further, the said my lords the deputies do demand that their next meeting be now appointed and declared, and that an irrevocable decision do fix and decree that assembly." This was providing at one and the same time for the wants of the present and the rights of the future.

The impost of talliage was, indeed, voted just as it had stood under Charles VII., but it became a temporary aid granted for two years only; at the end of them the estates were to be convoked and the tax augmented or diminished according to the public wants.

The great question appeared decided; by means of the vote, necessary and at the same time temporary, in the case of the impost, the states-general entered into real possession of a decisive influence in the government; but the behavior and language of the officers of the crown and of the great lords of the court rendered the situation as difficult as ever.

In a long and confused harangue the chancellor, William de Rochefort, did not confine himself to declaring the sum voted, twelve hundred thousand livres, to be insufficient, and demanding three hundred thousand livres more; he passed over in complete silence the limitation to two years of the tax voted and the requirement that at the end of that time the states-general should be convoked.