We have a tribunal revolutionnaire here, with its usual attendant the Guillotine, and executions are now become very frequent.  I know not who are the sufferers, and avoid enquiring through fear of hearing the name of some acquaintance.  As far as I can learn, the trials are but too summary, and little other evidence is required than the fortune, rank, and connections of the accused.  The Deputy who is Commissioner for this department is one Le Bon, formerly a priest—­and, I understand, of an immoral and sanguinary character, and that it is he who chiefly directs the verdicts of the juries according to his personal hatred or his personal interest.—­We have lately had a very melancholy instance of the terror created by this tribunal, as well as of the notions that prevail of its justice.  A gentleman of Calais, who had an employ under the government, was accused of some irregularity in his accounts, and, in consequence, put under arrest.  The affair became serious, and he was ordered to prison, as a preliminary to his trial.  When the officers entered his apartment to take him, regarding the judicial procedure as a mere form, and concluding it was determined to sacrifice him, he in a frenzy of despair seized the dogs in the chimney, threw them at the people, and, while they escaped to call for assistance, destroyed himself by cutting his arteries.—­It has appeared, since the death of this unfortunate man, that the charge against him was groundless, and that he only wanted time to arrange his papers, in order to exonerate himself entirely.

Oct. 19.

We are disturbed almost nightly by the arrival of fresh prisoners, and my first question of a morning is always "N’est il pas du monde entre la nuit?"—­Angelique’s usual reply is a groan, and "Ah, mon Dieu, oui;” “Une dixaine de pretres;" or, "Une trentaine de nobles:" ["Did not some people arrive in the night?"]—­“Yes, God help us—­half a score priests, or twenty or thirty gentry.”  And I observe the depth of the groan is nearly in proportion to the quality of the person she commiserates.  Thus, a groan for a Comte, a Marquise, or a Priest, is much more audible than one for a simple gentlewoman or a merchant; and the arrival of a Bishop (especially if not one of the constitutional clergy) is announced in a more sorrowful key than either.

While I was walking in the yard this morning, I was accosted by a female whom I immediately recollected to be Victoire, a very pretty couturiere, [Sempstress.] who used to work for me when I was at Panthemont, and who made your last holland shirts.  I was not a little surprized to see her in such a situation, and took her aside to enquire her history.  I found that her mother was dead, and that her brother having set up a little shop at St. Omer, had engaged her to go and live with him.  Being under five-and-twenty, the last requisition obliged him to depart for the army, and leave her to carry on the business alone.