The decree of the Convention to the same effect passed about the 1st of Floreal.  Merlin de Douai, (Minister of Justice in 1796,) Legendre, and Bourdon de l’Oise, were the zealous defenders of Maignet on this occasion.

—­Since the Assembly have thought it expedient to disavow these revolutionary measures, the conduct of Maignet has been denounced, and the accusations against him sent to a commission to be examined.  For a long time no report was made, till the impatience of Rovere, who is Maignet’s personal enemy, rendered a publication of the result dispensable.  They declared they found no room for censure or farther proceedings.  This decision was at first strongly reprobated by the Moderates; but as it was proved, in the course of the debate, that Maignet was authorized, by an express decree of the Convention, to burn Bedouin, and guillotine its inhabitants, all parties soon agreed to consign the whole to oblivion.

Our clothes, &c. are at length entirely released from sequestration, and the seals taken off.  We are indebted for this act of justice to the intrigues of Tallien, whose belle Espagnole is considerably interested.  Tallien’s good fortune is so much envied, that some of the members were little enough to move, that the property of the Spanish Bank of St. Charles (in which Madame T——­’s is included) should be excepted from the decree in favour of foreigners.  The Convention were weak enough to accede; but the exception will, doubtless, be over-ruled.

The weather is severe beyond what it has been in my remembrance.  The thermometer was this morning at fourteen and a half.  It is, besides, potentially cold, and every particle of air is like a dart.—­I suppose you contrive to keep yourselves warm in England, though it is not possible to do so here.  The houses are neither furnished nor put together for the climate, and we are fanned by these congealing winds, as though the apertures which admit them were designed to alleviate the ardours of an Italian sun.

The satin hangings of my room, framed on canvas, wave with the gales lodged behind them every second.  A pair of “silver cupids, nicely poised on their brands,” support a wood fire, which it is an occupation to keep from extinguishing; and all the illusion of a gay orange-grove pourtrayed on the tapestry at my feet, is dissipated by a villainous chasm of about half an inch between the floor and the skirting-boards.  Then we have so many corresponding windows, supernumerary doors, “and passages that lead to nothing,” that all our English ingenuity in comfortable arrangement is baffled.—­When the cold first became so insupportable, we attempted to live entirely in the eating-room, which is warmed by a poele, or German stove, but the kind of heat it emits is so depressive and relaxing to those who are not inured to it, that we are again returned to our large chimney and wood-fire.—­The French depend more on the warmth of their clothing, than the comfort of their houses.  They are all wadded and furred as though they were going on a sledge party, and the men, in this respect, are more delicate than the ladies:  but whether it be the consequence of these precautions, or from any other cause, I observe they are, in general, without excepting even the natives of the Southern provinces, less sensible of cold than the English.