Rising in the middle of the assembly, they went out two and two, dressed in their long scarlet robes, and threaded the crowd in silence.

There was a shout as they went, "There go true Romans, and fathers of their country!" "All those who saw this procession," says the advocate Barbier, "declare that it was something august and overpowering." The government did not accept the resignations; the struggle continued.

A hundred and thirty-nine members received letters under the king's seal (_lettres de cachet_), exiling them to the four quarters of France.

The Grand Chamber had been spared; the old councillors, alone remaining, enregistered purely and simply the declarations of the keeper of the seals.

Once more the Parliament was subdued; it had testified its complete political impotence.