We reached Mons. de ____’s just as the family were set down to a very
moderate supper, and I observed that their plate had been replaced by
pewter.   After the first salutations were over, it was soon visible that
the political notions of the count were much changed.   He is a sensible
reflecting man, and seems really to wish the good of his country.   He
thinks, with many others, that all the good effects which might have been
obtained by the revolution will be lost through the contempt and hatred
which the republican government has drawn upon it.

Mons. de ____ has two sons who have distinguished themselves very
honourably in the army, and he has himself made great pecuniary
sacrifices; but this has not secured him from numerous domiciliary visits
and vexations of all kinds.   The whole family are at intervals a little
pensive, and Mons. de ____ told us, at a moment when the ladies were
absent, that the taking of Valenciennes had occasioned a violent
fermentation at Paris, and that he had serious apprehensions for those
who have the misfortune to be distinguished by their rank, or obnoxious
from their supposed principles—­that he himself, and all who were
presumed to have an attachment to the constitution of eighty-nine, were
much more feared, and of course more suspected, than the original
aristocrates—­and “enfin” that he had made up his mind a la Francaise to
the worst that could happen.

I have just run over the papers of the day, and I perceive that the debates of the Convention are filled with invectives against the English.  A letter has been very opportunely found on the ramparts of Lisle, which is intended to persuade the people that the British government has distributed money and phosphoric matches in every town in France—­the one to provoke insurrection, the other to set fire to the corn.* You will conclude this letter to be a fabrication, and it is imagined and executed with so little ingenuity, that I doubt whether it will impose on the most ignorant of the people for a moment.

* “The National Convention, in the name of violated humanity, denounces to all the world, and to the people of England in particular, the base, perfidious, and wicked conduct of the British government, which does not hesitate to employ fire, poison, assassination, and every other crime, to procure the triumph of tyranny, and the destruction of the rights of man.” (Decree, 1st August, 1793.)

The Queen has been transferred to the Conciergerie, or common prison, and a decree is passed for trying her; but perhaps at this moment (whatever may be the result hereafter) they only hope her situation may operate as a check upon the enemy; at least I have heard it doubted by many whether they intend to proceed seriously on this trial so long threatened.—­ Perhaps I may have before noticed to you that the convention never seemed capable of any thing great or uniform, and that all their proceedings took a tinge from that