We stopped to change horses at Bernay, and I soon perceived our landlady was a very ardent patriot.  In a room, to which we waded at great risk of our clothes, was a representation of the siege of the Bastille, and prints of half a dozen American Generals, headed by Mr. Thomas Paine.  On descending, we found out hostess exhibiting a still more forcible picture of curiosity than Shakspeare’s blacksmith.  The half-demolished repast was cooling on the table, whilst our postilion retailed the Gazette, and the pigs and ducks were amicably grazing together on whatever the kitchen produced.  The affairs of the Prussians and Austrians were discussed with entire unanimity, but when these politicians, as is often the case, came to adjust their own particular account, the conference was much less harmonious.  The postilion offered a ten sols billet, which the landlady refused:  one persisted in its validity, the other in rejecting it—­till, at last, the patriotism of neither could endure this proof, and peace was concluded by a joint execration of those who invented this fichu papier—­ “Sorry paper.”

At ____ we met our friend, Mad. de ____, with part of her family and an
immense quantity of baggage.   I was both surprized and alarmed at such an
apparition, and found, on enquiry, that they thought themselves unsafe at
Arras, and were going to reside near M. de ____’s estate, where they were
better known.   I really began to doubt the prudence of our establishing
ourselves here for the winter.   Every one who has it in his power
endeavours to emigrate, even those who till now have been zealous
supporters of the revolution.—­Distrust and apprehension seem to have
taken possession of every mind.   Those who are in towns fly to the
country, while the inhabitant of the isolated chateau takes refuge in the
neighbouring town.   Flocks of both aristocrates and patriots are
trembling and fluttering at the foreboding storm, yet prefer to abide its
fury, rather than seek shelter and defence together.   I, however, flatter
myself, that the new government will not justify this fear; and as I am
certain my friends will not return to England at this season, I shall not
endeavour to intimidate or discourage them from their present
arrangement.   We shall, at least, be enabled to form some idea of a
republican constitution, and I do not, on reflection, conceive that any
possible harm can happen to us.

October, 1792.

I shall not date from this place again, intending to quit it as soon as possible.  It is disturbed by the crouds from the camps, which are broken up, and the soldiers are extremely brutal and insolent.  So much are the people already familiarized with the unnatural depravity of manners that begins to prevail, that the wife of the Colonel of a battalion now here walks the streets in a red cap, with pistols at her girdle, boasting of the numbers she has destroyed at the massacres in August and September.