I have learned since my return from the Providence, the death of Madame Elizabeth. I was ill when it happened, and my friends took some pains to conceal an event which they knew would affect me. In tracing the motives of the government for this horrid action, it may perhaps be sufficiently accounted for in the known piety and virtues of this Princess; but reasons of another kind have been suggested to me, and which, in all likelihood, contributed to hasten it. She was the only person of the royal family of an age competent for political transactions who had not emigrated, and her character extorted respect even from her enemies. [The Prince of Conti was too insignificant to be an object of jealousy in this way.] She must therefore, of course, since the death of the Queen, have been an object of jealousy to all parties. Robespierre might fear that she would be led to consent to some arrangement with a rival faction for placing the King on the throne—the Convention were under similar apprehensions with regard to him; so that the fate of this illustrious sufferer was probably gratifying to every part of the republicans.
I find, on reading her trial, (if so it may be called,) a repetition of one of the principal charges against the Queen—that of trampling on the national colours at Versailles, during an entertainment given to some newly-arrived troops. Yet I have been assured by two gentlemen, perfectly informed on the subject, and who were totally unacquainted with each other, that this circumstance, which has been so usefully enlarged upon, is false,* and that the whole calumny originated in the jealousy of a part of the national guard who had not been invited.
* This infamous calumny (originally fabricated by Lecointre the linen draper, then an officer of the National Guard, now a member of the council of 500) was amply confuted by M. Mounier, who was President of the States-General at the time, in a publication intitled "Expose de ma Conduite," which appeared soon after the event—in the autumn of 1789.—Editor.
But this, as well as the taking of the Bastille, and other revolutionary falsehoods, will, I trust, be elucidated. The people are now undeceived only by their calamities—the time may come, when it will be safe to produce their conviction by truth. Heroes of the fourteenth of July, and patriots of the tenth of August, how will ye shrink from it!—Yours, &c.
Amiens, Nov. 2, 1794.
Every post now brings me letters from England; but I perceive, by the suppressed congratulations of my friends, that, though they rejoice to find I am still alive, they are far from thinking me in a state of security. You, my dear Brother, must more particularly have lamented the tedious confinement I have endured, and the inconveniencies to which I have been subjected; I am, however, persuaded that you would not wish me to have been exempt from a persecution in which all the natives of England, who are not a disgrace to their country, as well as some that are so, have shared. Such an exemption would now be deemed a reproach; for, though it must be confessed that few of us have been voluntary sufferers, we still claim the honour of martyrdom, and are not very tolerant towards those who, exposed by their situation, may be supposed to have owed their protection to their principles.
There are, indeed, many known revolutionists and republicans, who, from party disputes, personal jealousies, or from being comprised in some general measure, have undergone a short imprisonment; and these men now wish to be confounded with their companions who are of a different description. But such persons are carefully distinguished;* and the aristocrats have, in their turn, a catalogue of suspicious people—that is, of people suspected of not having been suspicious.
* Mr. Thomas Paine, for instance, notwithstanding his sufferings, is still thought more worthy of a seat in the Convention or the Jacobins, than of an apartment in the Luxembourg.—Indeed I have generally remarked, that the French of all parties hold an English republican in peculiar abhorrence.
It is now the fashion to talk of a sojourn in a maison d'arret with triumph; and the more decent people, who from prudence or fear had been forced to seek refuge in the Jacobin clubs, are now solicitous to proclaim their real motives. The red cap no longer "rears its hideous front" by day, but is modestly converted into a night-cap; and the bearer of a diplome de Jacobin, instead of swinging along, to the annoyance of all the passengers he meets, paces soberly with a diminished height, and an air not unlike what in England we call sneaking. The bonnet rouge begins likewise to be effaced from flags at the doors; and, as though this emblem of liberty were a very bad neighbour to property, its relegation seems to encourage the re-appearance of silver forks and spoons, which are gradually drawn forth from their hiding-places, and resume their stations at table. The Jacobins represent themselves as being under the most cruel oppression, declare that the members of the Convention are aristocrats and royalists, and lament bitterly, that, instead of fish-women, or female patriots of republican external, the galleries are filled with auditors in flounces and anti-civic top-knots, femmes a fontanges.