I begin to be very uneasy about Mr. and Mrs. D____.   I have written
several times, and still receive no answer.   I fear they are in a
confinement more severe than my own, or that our letters miscarry.   A
servant of Mad. de ____’s was here this morning, and no letters had come
to Peronne, unless, as my friend endeavours to persuade me, the man would
not venture to give them in presence of the guard, who par excellence
happened to be a furious Jacobin.—­We had the mortification of hearing
that a very elegant carriage of Mad. de ____’s has been put in
requisition, and taken to convey a tinman and two farriers who were going
to Paris on a mission—­that two of her farmer’s best horses had been
killed by hard work in taking provisions to the army, and that they are
now cutting down the young wood on her estate to make pikes.—­The seals
are still on our effects, and the guard remains in possession, which has
put us to the expence of buying a variety of articles we could not well
dispense with:  for, on examining the baggage after our arrival, we found
it very much diminshed; and this has happened to almost all the people
who have been arrested.   Our suspicions naturally fall on the dragoons,
and it is not very surprizing that they should attempt to steal from
those whom they are certain would not dare to make any complaint.

Many of our fellow-prisoners are embarrassed by their servants having quitted them.—­One Collot d’Herbois, a member of the Commite de Salut Public, has proposed to the Convention to collect all the gentry, priests, and suspected people, into different buildings, which should be previously mined for the purpose, and, on the least appearance of insurrection, to blow them up all together.—­You may perhaps conclude, that such a project was received with horror, and the adviser of it treated as a monster.  Our humane legislature, however, very coolly sent it to the committee to be discussed, without any regard to the terror and apprehension which the bare idea of a similar proposal must inspire in those who are the destined victims.  I cannot myself believe that this abominable scheme is intended for execution, but it has nevertheless created much alarm in timid minds, and has occasioned in part the defection of the servants I have just mentioned.  Those who were sufficiently attached to their masters and mistresses to endure the confinement and privations of a Maison d’Arret, tremble at the thoughts of being involved in the common ruin of a gunpowder explosion; and the men seem to have less courage than the women, at least more of the latter have consented to remain here.—­It was atrocious to publish such a conception, though nothing perhaps was intended by it, as it may deprive many people of faithful attendants at a time when they are most necessary.