You are to notice, that the people in general, far from being averse to seeing the English treated with a comparative indulgence, were even pleased at it; and the invidious comparisons and complaints which prevented it, proceeded from the gentry, from the families of those who had found refuge in England, and who were involved in the common persecution.—­I have, more than once, been reproached by a female aristocrat with the ill success of the English army; and many, with whom I formerly lived on terms of intimacy, would refuse me now the most trifling service.—­I have heard of a lady, whose husband and brother are both in London, who amuses herself in teaching a bird to repeat abuse of the English.

It has been said, that the day a man becomes a slave, he loses half his virtue; and if this be true as to personal slavery, judging from the examples before me, I conclude it equally so of political bondage.—­The extreme despotism of the government seems to have confounded every principle of right and wrong, every distinction of honour and dishonour and the individual, of whatever class, alive only to the sense of personal danger, embraces without reluctance meanness or disgrace, if it insure his safety.—­A tailor or shoemaker, whose reputation perhaps is too bad to gain him a livelihood by any trade but that of a patriot, shall be besieged by the flatteries of people of rank, and have levees as numerous as Choiseul or Calonne in their meridian of power.

When a Deputy of the Convention is sent to a town on mission, sadness takes possession of every heart, and gaiety of every countenance.  He is beset with adulatory petitions, and propitiating gifts; the Noblesse who have escaped confinement form a sort of court about his person; and thrice happy is the owner of that habitation at which he condescends to reside.—­*

* When a Deputy arrives, the gentry of the town contend with jealous rivalship for the honour of lodging him; and the most eloquent eulogist of republican simplicity in the Convention does not fail to prefer a large house and a good table, even though the unhallowed property of an aristocrat.—­It is to be observed, that these Missionaries travel in a very patriarchal style, accompanied by their wives, children, and a numerous train of followers, who are not delicate in availing themselves of this hospitality, and are sometimes accused of carrying off the linen, or any thing else portable—­even the most decent behave on these occasions as though they were at an inn.

—­A Representative of gallantry has no reason to envy either the authority of the Grand Signor, or the licence of his seraglio—­he is arbiter of the fate of every woman that pleases him; and, it is supposed, that many a fair captive has owed her liberty to her charms, and that the philosophy of a French husband has sometimes opened the doors of his prison.