and confiscations for an adherence to religion were to be held sacred.—­I shall be excused for introducing here a few words respecting the affair of La Barre, which has been a favourite topic with popular writers of a certain description.  The severity of the punishment must, doubtless, be considered as disgraceful to those who advised as well as to those who sanctioned it:  but we must not infer from hence that he merited no punishment at all; and perhaps degradation, some scandalous and public correction, with a few years solitary confinement, might have answered every purpose intended.

La Barre was a young etourdi, under twenty, but of lively talents, which, unfortunately for him, had taken a very perverse turn.  The misdemeanour commonly imputed to him and his associates was, that they had mutilated a Christ which stood on the Pont-neuf at Abbeville:  but La Barre had accustomed himself to take all opportunities of insulting, with the most wanton malignity, these pious representations, and especially in the presence of people, with whom his particular connections led him to associate, and whose profession could not allow them entirely to overlook such affronts on what was deemed an appendage to the established religion of the country.

The people of Abbeville manifested their sense of the business when d’Etalonde, La Barre’s intimate friend, who had saved himself by flight, returned, after a long exile, under favour of the revolution.  He was received in the neighbourhood with the most mortifying indifference.

The decree of the Convention too, by which the memory of this imprudent young man was re-established, when promulgated, created about as much interest as any other law which did not immediately affect the property or awaken the apprehensions of the hearers.

Madame de St. E__m__d told me her whole fortune was now reduced to a few Louis, and about six or seven thousand livres in diamonds; that she was unwilling to burden her aunt, who was not rich, and intended to make some advantage of her musical talents, which are indeed considerable.  But I could not, without anguish, hear an elegant young woman, with a heart half broken, propose to get her living by teaching music.—­I know not that I ever passed a more melancholy day.  In the afternoon we walked up and down the path of the village church-yard.  The church was shut up, the roof in part untiled, the windows were broken, and the wooden crosses that religion or tenderness had erected to commemorate the dead, broken and scattered about.  Two labourers, and a black-smith in his working garb, came while we were there, and threw a sort of uncouth wooden coffin hastily into a hole dug for the purpose, which they then covered and left without farther ceremony.  Yet this was the body of a lady regretted by a large family, who were thus obliged to conquer both their affection and their prejudices, and inter her according to the republican mode.*