* Whoever reads attentively, and in detail, the debates of the Convention, will observe the influence and envy created by a superior style of living in any particular member.  His dress, his lodging, or dinners, are a perpetual subject of malignant reproach.  —­This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the description of men the Convention is composed of;—­men who, never having been accustomed to the elegancies of life, behold with a grudging eye the gay apparel or luxurious table of a colleague, who arrived at Paris with no other treasure but his patriotism, and has no ostensible means beyond his eighteen livres a day, now increased to thirty-six.

Mad. de Fontenay, was, therefore, on her arrival at Paris, whither she had followed Tallien, (probably in order to procure a divorce and marry him,) arrested, and conveyed to prison.

An injury of this kind was not to be forgiven; and Robespierre seems to have acted on the presumption that it could not.  He beset Tallien with spies, menaced him in the Convention, and made Mad. de Fontenay an offer of liberty, if she would produce a substantial charge against him, which he imagined her knowledge of his conduct at Bourdeaux might furnish her grounds for doing.  A refusal must doubtless have irritated the tyrant; and Tallien had every reason to fear she would soon be included in one of the lists of victims who were daily sacrificed as conspirators in the prisons.  He was himself in continual expectation of being arrested; and it was generally believed Robespierre would soon openly accuse him.—­Thus situated, he eagerly embraced the opportunity which the schism in the Committee presented of attacking his adversary, and we certainly must allow him the merit of being the first who dared to move for the arrest of Robespierre.—­I need not add, that la belle was one of the first whose prison doors were opened; and I understand that, being divorced from Mons. de Fontenay, she is either married, or on the point of being so, to Tallien.

This conclusion spoils my story as a moral one; and had I been the disposer of events, the Septembriser, the regicide, and the cold assassin of the Toulonais, should have found other rewards than affluence, and a wife who might represent one of Mahomet’s Houris.  Yet, surely, “the time will come, though it come ne’er so slowly,” when Heaven shall separate guilt from prosperity, and when Tallien and his accomplices shall be remembered only as monuments of eternal justice.  For the lady, her faults are amply punished in the disgrace of such an alliance—­

“A cut-purse of the empire and the rule;
“____ a King of shreds and patches.”

Providence, Aug. 14, 1794.

The thirty members whom Robespierre intended to sacrifice, might perhaps have formed some design of resisting, but it appears evident that the Convention in general acted without plan, union, or confidence.*—­