“On my arrival amongst you, I little thought that malevolence would be so far successful as to alarm you on the motives of my visit.  Could the aristocrates, then, flatter themselves with the hope of making you believe I had the intention of disarming you?  Be deaf, I beseech you, to so absurd a calumny, and seize on those who propagate it.  I came here to fraternize with you, and to assist you in getting rid of those malcontents and foreigners, who are striving to destroy the republic by the most infernal manoeuvres.—­An horrible plot has been conceived.  Our harvests are to be fired by means of phosphoric matches, and all the patriots assassinated.  Women, priests, and foreigners, are the instruments employed by the coalesced despots, and by England above all, to accomplish these criminal designs.—­A law of the first of this month orders the arrest of all foreigners born in the countries with which the republic is at war, and not settled in France before the month of July, 1789.  In execution of this law I have required domiciliary visits to be made.  I have urged the preservation of the public tranquillity.  I have therefore done my duty, and only what all good citizens must approve.”

I have just received a few lines from Mrs. D____, written in French, and
put in the post without sealing.   I perceive, by the contents, though she
enters into no details, that circumstances similar to those I have
described have likewise taken place at Amiens.   In addition to my other
anxieties, I have the prospect of a long separation from my friends; for
though I am not in confinement, I cannot, while the decree which arrested
me remains in force, quit the town of Peronne.   I have not often looked
forward with so little hope, or so little certainty, and though a
first-rate philosopher might make up his mind to a particular event, yet
to be prepared for any thing, and all things, is a more difficult
matter.

The histories of Greece and Rome have long constituted the grand resources of French eloquence, and it is not till within a few days that an orator has discovered all this good learning to be of no use—­not, as you might imagine, because the moral character and political situation of the French differ from those of the Greeks and Romans, but because they are superior to all the people who ever existed, and ought to be cited as models, instead of descending to become copyists.  “Therefore, continues this Jacobin sage, (whose name is Henriot, and who is highly popular,) let us burn all the libraries and all the antiquities, and have no guide but ourselves—­let us cut off the heads of all the Deputies who have not voted according to our principles, banish or imprison all the gentry and the clergy, and guillotine the Queen and General Custine!”