A commission has been employed for some time in devising another new constitution, which is to be proposed to the Assembly on the thirteenth of this month; and on that day, it is said, an effort is to be made by the royalists.  They are certainly very numerous, and the interest taken in the young King is universal.  In vain have the journalists been forbidden to cherish these sentiments, by publishing details concerning him:  whatever escapes the walls of his prison is circulated in impatient whispers, and requires neither printing nor gazettes a la main to give it publicity.*

* Under the monarchy people disseminated anecdotes or intelligence which they did not think it safe to print, by means of these written gazettes.—­I doubt if any one would venture to have recourse to them at present.

—­The child is reported to be ill, and in a kind of stupefaction, so as to sit whole days without speaking or moving:  this is not natural at his age, and must be the consequence of neglect, or barbarous treatment.

The Committees of Government, and indeed most of the Convention who have occasionally appeared to give tacit indications of favouring the royalists, in order to secure their support against the Jacobins, having now crushed the latter, begin to be seriously alarmed at the projects of the former.—­Sevestre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, has announced that a formidable insurrection may be expected on the twenty-fifth of Prairial, (thirteenth June,) the Deputies on mission are ordered to return, and the Assembly propose to die under the ruins of the republic.  They have, notwithstanding, judged it expedient to fortify these heroic dispositions by the aid of a military force, and a large number of regular troops are in Paris and the environs.  We shall certainly depart before this menacing epoch:  the application for our passports was made on our first arrival, and Citizen Liebault, Principal of the Office for Foreign Affairs, who is really very civil, has promised them in a day or two.

Our journey here was, in fact, unnecessary; but we have few republican acquaintance, and those who are called aristocrats do not execute commission of this kind zealously, nor without some apprehensions of committing themselves.—­You will wonder that I find time to write to you, nor do I pretend to assume much merit from it.  We have not often courage to frequent public places in the evening, and, when we do, I continually dread some unlucky accident:  either a riot between the Terrorists and Muscadins, within, or a military investment without.  The last time we were at the theatre, a French gentleman, who was our escort, entered into a trifling altercation with a rude vulgar-looking man, in the box, who seemed to speak in a very authoritative tone, and I know not how the matter might have ended, had not a friend in the next box silenced our companion, by conveying a penciled card, which informed him the person he