Peronne, August 24, 1793.

I have been out to-day for the first time since the arrest of the English, and, though I have few acquaintances here, my adventure at the Hotel de Ville has gained me a sort of popularity.  I was saluted by many people I did not know, and overwhelmed with expressions of regret for what had happened, or congratulations on my having escaped so well.

The French are not commonly very much alive to the sufferings of others, and it is some mortification to my vanity that I cannot, but at the expence of a reproaching conscience, ascribe the civilities I have experienced on this occasion to my personal merit.  It would doubtless have been highly flattering to me to relate the tender and general interest I had excited even among this cold-hearted people, who scarcely feel for themselves:  but the truth is, they are disposed to take the part of any one whom they think persecuted by their government; and their representative, Dumont, is so much despised in his private character, and detested in his public one, that it suffices to have been ill treated by him, to ensure one a considerable portion of the public good will.

This disposition is not a little consolatory, at a time when the whole rage of an oligarchical tyranny, though impotent against the English as a nation, meanly exhausts itself on the few helpless individuals within its power.  Embarrassments accumulate and if Mr. Pitt’s agents did not most obligingly write letters, and these letters happen to be intercepted just when they are most necessary, the Comite de Salut Publique would be at a loss how to account for them.

Assignats have fallen into a discredit beyond example, an hundred and thirty livres having been given for one Louis-d’or; and, as if this were not the natural result of circumstances like the present, a correspondence between two Englishmen informs us, that it is the work of Mr. Pitt, who, with an unparalleled ingenuity, has contrived to send couriers to every town in France, to concert measures with the bankers for this purpose.  But if we may believe Barrere, one of the members of the Committee, this atrocious policy of Mr. Pitt will not be unrevenged, for another intercepted letter contains assurances that an hundred thousand men have taken up arms in England, and are preparing to march against the iniquitous metropolis that gives this obnoxious Minister shelter.

My situation is still the same—­I have no hope of returning to Amiens, and have just reason to be apprehensive for my tranquillity here.  I had a long conversation this morning with two people whom Dumont has left here to keep the town in order during his absence.  The subject was to prevail on them to give me a permission to leave Peronne, but I could not succeed.  They were not, I believe, indisposed to gratify me, but were afraid of involving themselves.  One of them expressed much partiality for the English, but was very vehement in his disapprobation