I saw yesterday a relation of Madame de la F--------, who is in the army,
and whom I formerly mentioned as having met when we passed through
Dourlens.   He was for some months suspended, and in confinement, but is
now restored to his rank, and ordered on service.   He asked me if I ever
intended to visit France again.   I told him I had so little reason to be
satisfied with my treatment, that I did not imagine I should.—­“Yes,
(returned he,) but if the republic should conquer Italy, and bring all
its treasures to Paris, as has lately been suggested in the Convention,
we shall tempt you to return, in spite of yourself."*

The project of pillaging Italy of its most valuable works of art was suggested by the philosophic Abbe Gregoire, a constitutional Bishop, as early as September 1794, because, as he alledged, the chefs d’ouvres of the Greek republic ought not to embellish a country of slaves.

—­I told him, I neither doubted their intending such a scheme, nor the possibility of its success, though it was not altogether worthy of philosophers and republicans to wage war for Venus’s and Appollos, and to sacrifice the lives of one part of their fellow-citizens, that the rest might be amused with pictures and statues.—­“That’s not our affair (says Monsieur de --------).  Soldiers do not reason.  And if the Convention should have a fancy to pillage the Emperor of China’s palace, I see no remedy but to set sail with the first fair wind,”—­“I wish, (said his sister, who was the only person present,) instead of being under such orders, you had escaped from the service.”  “Yes, (returned the General quickly,) and wander about Europe like Dumouriez, suspected and despised by all parties.”  I observed, Dumouriez was an adventurer, and that on many accounts it was necessary to guard against him.  He said, he did not dispute the necessity or even the justice of the conduct observed towards him, but that nevertheless I might be assured it had operated as an effectual check to those who might, otherwise, have been tempted to follow Dumouriez’s example; “And we have now (added he, in a tone between gaiety and despair,) no alternative but obedience or the guillotine.”—­I have transcribed the substance of this conversation, as it confirms what I have frequently been told, that the fate of Dumouriez, however merited, is one great cause why no desertion of importance has since taken place.

I was just now interrupted by a noise and shouting near my window, and could plainly distinguish the words Scipio and Solon uttered in a tone of taunt and reproach.  Not immediately comprehending how Solon or Scipio could be introduced in a fray at Paris, I dispatched Angelique to make enquiry; and at her return I learned that a croud of boys were following a shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who, while he was member of a revolutionary Committee, had chosen to unite in his person the glories of both Rome and Greece, of the sword and gown, and had taken unto himself