called billets de confiance) is issued, the Hotel de Ville is besieged by a host of women collected from all parts of the district—­Peasants, small shopkeepers, fervant maids, and though last, not least formidable—­ fishwomen.  They usually take their stand two or three hours before the time of delivery, and the interval is employed in discussing the news, and execrating paper money.  But when once the door is opened, a scene takes place which bids defiance to language, and calls for the pencil of a Hogarth.  Babel was, I dare say, comparatively to this, a place of retreat and silence.  Clamours, revilings, contentions, tearing of hair, and breaking of heads, generally conclude the business; and, after the loss of half a day’s time, some part of their clothes, and the expence of a few bruises, the combatants retire with small bills to the value of five, or perhaps ten livres, as the whole resource to carry on their little commerce for the ensuing week.  I doubt not but the paper may have had some share in alienating the minds of the people from the revolution.  Whenever I want to purchase any thing, the vender usually answers my question by another, and with a rueful kind of tone inquires, “En papier, madame?”—­and the bargain concludes with a melancholy reflection on the hardness of the times.

The decrees relative to the priests have likewise occasioned much dissension; and it seems to me impolitic thus to have made religion the standard of party.  The high mass, which is celebrated by a priest who has taken the oaths, is frequented by a numerous, but, it must be confessed, an ill-drest and ill-scented congregation; while the low mass, which is later, and which is allowed the nonjuring clergy, has a gayer audience, but is much less crouded.—­By the way, I believe many who formerly did not much disturb themselves about religious tenets, have become rigid Papists since an adherence to the holy see has become a criterion of political opinion.  But if these separatists are bigoted and obstinate, the conventionalists on their side are ignorant and intolerant.

I enquired my way to-day to the Rue de l’Hopital.  The woman I spoke to asked me, in a menacing tone, what I wanted there.  I replied, which was true, that I merely wanted to pass through the street as my nearest way home; upon which she lowered her voice, and conducted me very civilly.—­I mentioned the circumstance on my return, and found that the nuns of the hospital had their mass performed by a priest who had not taken the oaths, and that those who were suspected of going to attend it were insulted, and sometimes ill treated.  A poor woman, some little time ago, who conceived perhaps that her salvation might depend on exercising her religion in the way she had been accustomed to, persisted in going, and was used by the populace with such a mixture of barbarity and indecency, that her life was despaired of.  Yet this is the age and the country of Philosophers.—­Perhaps you will begin to think Swift’s sages, who only amused themselves with endeavouring to propagate sheep without wool, not so contemptible.  I am almost convinced myself, that when a man once piques himself on being a philosopher, if he does no mischief you ought to be satisfied with him.