* There were some priests guillotined at Amiens, but the circumstance was concealed from me for some months after it happened.
* There were some priests guillotined at Amiens, but the circumstance was concealed from me for some months after it happened.
—Dumont, I know, expects to establish a reputation by not having guillotined as an amusement, and hopes that he may here find a retreat when his revolutionary labours shall be finished.
The Convention have not yet chosen the members who are to form the new Committee. They were yesterday solemnly employed in receiving the American Ambassador; likewise a brass medal of the tyrant Louis the Fourteenth, and some marvellous information about the unfortunate Princess' having dressed herself in mourning at the death of Robespierre. These legislators remind me of one of Swift's female attendants, who, in spite of the literary taste he endeavoured to inspire her with, never could be divested of her original housewifely propensities, but would quit the most curious anecdote, as he expresses it, "to go seek an old rag in a closet." Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in the stripes of the flag, and their vengeance against regal anthropophagi, and proud islanders, is infallibly diverted by a denunciation of an aristocratic quartrain, or some new mode, whose general adoption renders it suspected as the badge of a party.—If, according to Cardinal de Retz' opinion, elaborate attention to trifles denote a little mind, these are true Lilliputian sages.—Yours, &c.
August, 1794.
I did not leave the Providence until some days after the date of my last: there were so many precautions to be taken, and so many formalities to be observed—such references from the municipality to the district, and from the district to the Revolutionary Committee, that it is evident Robespierre's death has not banished the usual apprehension of danger from the minds of those who became responsible for acts of justice or humanity. At length, after procuring a house-keeper to answer with his life and property for our re-appearance, and for our attempting nothing against the "unity and indivisibility" of the republic, we bade (I hope) a long adieu to our prison.
Madame de ____ is to remain with me till her house can be repaired; for it has been in requisition so often, that there is now, we are told, scarcely a bed left, or a room habitable. We have an old man placed with us by way of a guard, but he is civil, and is not intended to be a restraint upon us. In fact, he has a son, a member of the Jacobin club, and this opportunity is taken to compliment him, by taxing us with the maintenance of his father. It does not prevent us from seeing our acquaintance, and we might, I suppose, go out, though we have not yet ventured.
The politics of the Convention are fluctuating and versatile, as will ever be the case where men are impelled by necessity to act in opposition to their principles. In their eagerness to attribute all the past excesses to Robespierre, they have, unawares, involved themselves in the obligation of not continuing the same system. They doubtless expected, by the fall of the tyrant, to become his successors; but the people, weary of being dupes, and of hearing that tyrants were fallen, without feeling any diminution of tyranny, have every where manifested a temper, which the Convention, in the present relaxed state of its power, is fearful of making experiments upon. Hence, great numbers of prisoners are liberated, those that remain are treated more indulgently, and the fury of revolutionary despotism is in general abated.
The Deputies who most readily assent to these changes have assumed the appellation of Moderates; (Heaven knows how much they are indebted to comparison;) and the popularity they have acquired has both offended and alarmed the more inflexible Jacobins. A motion has just been made by one Louchet, that a list of all persons lately enlarged should be printed, with the names of those Deputies who solicited in their favour, annexed; and that such aristocrats as were thus discovered to have regained their liberty, should be re-imprisoned.—The decree passed, but was so ill received by the people, that it was judged prudent to repeal it the next day.