Those members of the Parliament from whom weakness or astonishment had surprised a yes retracted as soon as they were assembled, and underwent the same fate as their colleagues.

On the 23d of January, members delegated by the grand council, charged with the provisional administration of justice, were installed in the Palace by the chancellor himself.

The registrar-in- chief, the ushers, the attorneys, declined or eluded the exercise of their functions; the advocates did not come forward to plead.

The Court of Aids, headed by Lamoignon de Malesherbes, protested against the attack made on the great bodies of the state.

"Ask the nation themselves, sir," said the president, "to mark your displeasure with the Parliament of Paris, it is proposed to rob them--themselves--of the essential rights of a free people." The Court of Aids was suppressed like the Parliament; six superior councils, in the towns of Arras, Blois, Chalons-sur-Marne, Lyon, Clermont, and Poitiers parcelled out amongst them the immense jurisdiction of Paris; the members of the grand council, assisted by certain magistrates of small esteem, definitively took the places of the banished, to whom compensation was made for their offices.