—After these civic amusements, we closed our chairs round the fire, conjecturing how long the republic might last, or whether we should all pass another twelve months in prison, and, agreeing that both our fate and that of the republic were very precarious, adjourned to rest.
While I was undressing, I observed Angelique looked extremely discontented, and on my enquiring what was the matter, she answered, "C'est que je m'ennuie beaucoup ici," ["I am quite tired of this place.">[ "Mademoiselle," (for no state or calling is here exempt from this polite sensation.) "And why, pray?"—"Ah quelle triste societe, tout le monde est d'un patriotisme insoutenable, la maison est remplie d'images republicaines, des Marat, des Voltaire, des Pelletier, que sais-moi? et voila jusqu'au garcon de l'ecurie qui me traite de citoyenne." ["Oh, they are a sad set—every body is so insufferably patriotic. The house is full from top to bottom of republican images, Marats, and Voltaires, and Pelletiers, and I don't know who—and I am called Citizen even by the stable boy.">[ I did not think it right to satisfy her as to the real principles of our friends, and went to bed ruminating on the improvements which the revolution must have occasioned in the art of dissimulation. Terror has drilled people of the most opposite sentiments into such an uniformity of manner and expression, that an aristocrat who is ruined and persecuted by the government is not distinguishable from the Jacobin who has made his fortune under it.
In the morning Angelique's countenance was brightened, and I found she had slept in the same room with Madame's femme de chambre, when an explanation of their political creeds had taken place, so that she now assured me Mad. Augustine was "fort honnete dans le fond," [A very good girl at heart.] though she was obliged to affect republicanism.—"All the world's a stage," says our great dramatic moralist. France is certainly so at present, and we are not only necessitated to act a part, but a sorry one too; for we have no choice but to exhibit in farce, or suffer in tragedy.—Yours, &c.
December 27, 1794.
I took the opportunity of my being here to go about four leagues farther to see an old convent acquaintance lately come to this part of the country, and whom I have not met since I was at Orleans in 1789.
The time has been when I should have thought such a history as this lady's a romance, but tales of woe are now become familiar to us, and, if they create sympathy, they no longer excite surprize, and we hear of them as the natural effects of the revolution.
Madame de St. E__m__d is the daughter of a gentleman whose fortune was inadequate both to his rank and manner of living, and he gladly embraced the offer of Monsieur de St. E__m__d to marry her at sixteen, and to relinquish the fortune allotted her to her two younger sisters. Monsieur de St. E__m__d, being a dissipated man, soon grew weary of any sort of domestic life, and placing his wife with her father, in less than a year after their marriage departed for Italy.—Madame de St. E__m__d, thus left in a situation both delicate and dangerous for a young and pretty woman, became unfortunately attached to a gentleman who was her distant relation: yet, far from adopting the immoral principles not unjustly ascribed to your country, she conducted herself with a prudence and reserve, which even in France made her an object of general respect. About three years after her husband's departure the revolution took place, and not returning, he was of course put on the list of emigrants. In 1792, when the law passed which sanctioned and facilitated divorces, her friends all earnestly persuaded her to avail herself of it, but she could not be prevailed upon to consider the step as justifiable; for though Monsieur de St. E__m__d neglected her, he had, in other respects, treated her with generosity and kindness. She, therefore, persisted in her refusal, and her lover, in despair, joined the republican army.
At the general arrest of the Noblesse, Madame de St. E__m__d and her sisters were confined in the town where they resided, but their father was sent to Paris; and a letter from one of his female relations, who had emigrated, being found among his papers, he was executed without being able to see or write to his children. Madame de St. E__m__d's husband had returned about the same time to France, in the disguise of a post-boy, was discovered, and shared the same fate. These events reached her love, still at the army, but it was impossible for him to quit his post, and in a few days after, being mortally wounded, he died,* recommending Eugenie de St. E__m__d to the protection of his father.—
* This young man, who died gallantly fighting in the cause of the republic, was no republican: but this does not render the murder of his father, a deaf [There were people both deaf and dumb in the prisons as conspirators.] and inoffensive man, less abominable.—The case of General Moreau's father, though somewhat similar, is yet more characteristic of the revolution. Mons. Moreau was persuaded, by a man who had some interest in the business, to pay a debt which he owed an emigrant, to an individual, instead of paying it, as the law directed, to the use of the republic. The same man afterwards denounced him, and he was thrown into prison. At nine o'clock on the night preceding his trial, his act of accusation was brought him, and before he had time to sketch out a few lines for his defence, the light by which he wrote was taken away. In the morning he was tried, the man who had informed against him sitting as one of his judges, and he was condemned and executed the very day on which his son took the Fort de l'Ecluse!—Mons. Moreau had four sons, besides the General in the army, and two daughters, all left destitute by the confiscation of his property.