I have now been in confinement almost twelve months, and my health is considerably impaired. The weather is oppressively warm, and we have no shade in the garden but under a mulberry-tree, which is so surrounded by filth, that it is not approachable. I am, however, told, that in a few days, on account of my indisposition, I shall be permitted to go home, though with a proviso of being guarded at my own expence.—My friends are still at Arras; and if this indulgence be extended to Mad. de la F____, she will accompany me. Personal accommodation, and an opportunity of restoring my health, render this desirable; but I associate no idea of freedom with my residence in this country. The boundary may be extended, but it is still a prison.—Yours.
Providence, Aug. 15, 1794.
To-morrow I expect to quit this place, and have been wandering over it for the last time. You will imagine I can have no attachment to it: yet a retrospect of my sensations when I first arrived, of all I have experienced, and still more of what I have apprehended since that period, makes me look forward to my departure with a satisfaction that I might almost call melancholy. This cell, where I have shivered through the winter—the long passages, which I have so often traversed in bitter rumination—the garden, where I have painfully breathed a purer air, at the risk of sinking beneath the fervid rays of an unmitigated sun, are not scenes to excite regret; but when I think that I am still subject to the tyranny which has so long condemned me to them, this reflection, with a sentiment perhaps of national pride, which is wounded by accepting as a favour what I have been unjustly deprived of, renders me composed, if not indifferent, at the prospect of my release.
This dreary epoch of my life has not been without its alleviations. I have found a chearful companion in Mad. de M____, who, at sixty, was brought here, because she happened to be the daughter of Count L____, who has been dead these thirty years!—The graces and silver accents of Madame de B____, might have assisted in beguiling severer captivity; and the Countess de C____, and her charming daughters (the eldest of whom is not to be described in the common place of panegyric), who, though they have borne their own afflictions with dignity, have been sensible to the misfortunes of others, and whom I must, in justice, except from all the imputations of meanness or levity, which I have sometimes had occasion to notice in those who, like themselves, were objects of republican persecution, have essentially contributed to diminish the horrors of confinement.—I reckon it likewise among my satisfactions, that, with the exception of the Marechalle de Biron,* and General O'Moran, none of our fellow-prisoners have suffered on the scaffold.—
* The Marechalle de Biron, a very old and infirm woman, was taken from hence to the Luxembourg at Paris, where her daughter-in-law, the Duchess, was also confined. A cart arriving at that prison to convey a number of victims to the tribunal, the list, in the coarse dialect of republicanism, contained the name of la femme Biron. "But there are two of them," said the keeper. "Then bring them both."— The aged Marechalle, who was at supper, finished her meal while the rest were preparing, then took up her book of devotion, and departed chearfully.—The next day both mother and daughter were guillotined.
—Dumont has, indeed, virtually occasioned the death of several; in particular the Duc du Chatelet, the Comte de Bethune, Mons. de Mancheville, &c.—and it is no merit in him that Mr. Luttrell, with a poor nun of the name of Pitt,* whom he took from hence to Paris, as a capture which might give him importance, were not massacred either by the mob or the tribunal.
* This poor woman, whose intellects, as I am informed, appeared in a state of derangement, was taken from a convent at Abbeville, and brought to the Providence, as a relation of Mr. Pitt, though I believe she has no pretensions to that honour. But the name of Pitt gave her importance; she was sent to Paris under a military escort, and Dumont announced the arrival of this miserable victim with all the airs of a conqueror. I have been since told, she was lodged at St. Pelagie, where she suffered innumerable hardships, and did not recover her liberty for many months after the fall of Robespierre.
—If the persecution of this department has not been sanguinary,* it should be remembered, that it has been covered with prisons; and that the extreme submission of its inhabitants would scarcely have furnished the most merciless tyrant with a pretext for a severer regimen.—
* There were some priests guillotined at Amiens, but the circumstance was concealed from me for some months after it happened.