The Deputies who were imprisoned as accomplices of the Girondists, and on other different pretexts, have petitioned either to be brought to trial or released; and the abominable conduct of Carrier at Nantes is so fully substantiated, that the whole country is impatient to have some steps taken towards bringing him to punishment:  yet the Convention are averse from both these measures—­they procrastinate and elude the demand of their seventy-two colleagues, who were arrested without a specific charge; while they almost protect Carrier, and declare, that in cases which tend to deprive a Representative of his liberty, it is better to reflect thirty times than once.  This is curious doctrine with men who have sent so many people arbitrarily to the scaffold, and who now detain seventy-two Deputies in confinement, they know not why.

The ashes of Rousseau have recently been deposited with the same ceremonies, and in the same place, as those of Marat.  We should feel for such a degradation of genius, had not the talents of Rousseau been frequently misapplied; and it is their misapplication which has levelled him to an association with Marat.  Rousseau might be really a fanatic, and, though eccentric, honest; yet his power of adorning impracticable systems, it must be acknowledged, has been more mischievous to society than a thousand such gross impostors as Marat.

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.