“I promised my kind friends to write as soon as I should have any thing satisfactory to communicate:  but, alas!  I have no hope of being the harbinger of any thing but circumstances of a very different tendency.  I can only give you details of the horrors I have already generally described.  Carnage has not yet ceased; and is only become more cool and more discriminating.  All the mild characteristics annihilated; and a frantic cruelty, which is dignified with the name of patriotism, has usurped ever faculty, and banished both reason and mercy.

“Mons. ____, whom I have hitherto known by reputation, as an upright, and
even humane man, had a brother shut up, with a number of other priests,
at the Carmes; and, by his situation and connections, he has such
influence as might, if exerted, have preserved the latter.   The
unfortunate brother knowing this, found means, while hourly expecting his
fate, to convey a note to Mr. ____, begging he would immediately release,
and procure him an asylum.   The messenger returned with an answer, that
Mons. ____ had no relations in the enemies of his country!

“A few hours after, the massacres at the Carmes took place.—­One Panis,* who is in the Comite de Surveillance, had, a few days previous to these dreadful events, become, I know not on what occasion, the depositary of a large sum of money belonging to a gentleman of his section.

     * Panis has since figured on various occasions.  He is a member of
     the Convention, and was openly accused of having been an accomplice
     in the robbery of the Garde Meuble.

“A secret and frivolous denunciation was made the pretext for throwing the owner of the money into prison, where he remained till September, when his friends, recollecting his danger, flew to the Committee and applied for his discharge.  Unfortunately, the only member of the Committee present was Panis.  He promised to take measures for an immediate release.—­Perhaps he kept his word, but the release was cruel and final—­the prison was attacked, and the victim heard of no more.—­You will not be surprized at such occurrences when I tell you that G____,* whom you must remember to have heard of as a Jacobin at ____, is President of the Committee above mentioned—­yes, an assassin is now the protector of the public safety, and the commune of Paris the patron of a criminal who has merited the gibbet.

* G____ was afterwards elected (doubtless by a recommendation of the
Jacobins) Deputy for the department of Finisterre, to which he was
sent Commissioner by the Convention.   On account of some
unwarrantable proceedings, and of some words that escaped him, which
gave rise to a suspicion that he was privy to the robbery of the
Garde Meuble, he was arrested by the municipality of Quimper
Corentin, of which place he is a native.   The Jacobins applied for
his discharge, and for the punishment of the municipality; but the
Convention, who at that time rarely took any decisive measures,