Morning at length came, and our servants were permitted to enter with breakfast.  They appeared sorrowful and terror-stricken, but offered with great willingness to accompany us whithersoever we should be sent.  After a melancholy sort of discussion, it was decided that we should take our femmes de chambres, and that the others should remain for the safety of the house, and to send us what we might have occasion for.  This settled, they returned with such directions as we were able to give them, (God knows, not very coherent ones,) to prepare for our journey:  and as our orders, however confused, were not very voluminous, they were soon executed, and before noon every thing was in readiness for our departure.  The people employed by our companions were equally diligent, and we might very well have set out by one o’clock, had our case been at all considered; but, I know not why, instead of so providing that we might reach our destination in the course of the day, it seemed to have been purposely contrived that we should be all night on the road, though we had already passed one night without rest, and were exhausted by watching and fatigue.

In this uncertain and unpleasant state we waited till near six o’clock; a number of small covered waggons were then brought, accompanied by a detachment of dragoons, who were to be our escort.  Some time elapsed, as you may suppose, before we could be all settled in the carriages and such a cavalcade put in motion; but the concourse of people that filled the streets, the appearance of the troops, and the tumult occasioned by so many horses and carriages, overpowered my spirits, and I remember little of what passed till I found we were on the road to Arras.  Mad. de ____’s maid now informed us, that Dumont had arrived the evening before in extreme ill humour, summoned the municipality in haste, enquired how many people they had arrested, and what denunciations they had yet to make.  The whole body corporate trembled, they had arrested no one, and, still worse, they had no one to accuse; and could only alledge in their behalf, that the town was in the utmost tranquillity, and the people were so well disposed, that all violence was unnecessary.  The Representant became furious, vociferated tout grossierement a la Francaise, [In the vulgar French manner.] that he knew there were five thousand aristocrates in Peronne, and that if he had not at least five hundred brought him before morning, he would declare the town in a state of rebellion.

Alarmed by this menace, they began to arrest with all possible speed, and were more solicitous to procure their number than to make discriminations.  Their diligence, however, was inadequate to appease the choleric legislator, and the Mayor, municipal officers, and all the administrators of the district, were in the morning sent to the Castle, whence they are to be conveyed, with some of their own prisoners, to Amiens.

Besides this intelligence, we learned that before our servants had finished packing up our trunks, some Commissioners of the section arrived to put the seals on every thing belonging to us, and it was not without much altercation that they consented to our being furnished with necessaries—­that they had not only sealed up all the house, but had placed guards there, each of whom Mad. de ____ is to pay, at the rate of two shillings a day.