in twenty-four hours.  At the Providence, the well was left three days without a cord, and when the unfortunate females confined there procured people to beg water of the neighbours, they were refused, “because it was for prisoners, and if Le Bon heard of it he might be displeased!” Windows were blocked up, not to prevent escape, but to exclude air; and when the general scarcity rendered it impossible for the prisoners to procure sufficient food for their support, their small portions were diminished at the gate, under pretext of searching for letters, &c.  —­People, respectable both for their rank and character, were employed to clean the prisons and privies, while their low and insolent tyrants looked on and insulted them.  On an occasion when one of the Maisons d’Arrets was on fire, guards were planted round, with orders to fire upon those that should attempt to escape.—­My memory has but too faithfully recorded these and still greater horrors; but curiosity would be gratified but too dearly by the relation.  I added the above note some months after writing the letter to which it is annexed.

Nov. 20.

Besides the gentry and clergy of this department, we have likewise for companions a number of inhabitants of Lisle, arrested under circumstances singularly atrocious, even where atrocity is the characteristic of almost every proceeding.—­In the month of August a decree was passed to oblige all the nobility, clergy, and their servants, as well as all those persons who had been in the service of emigrants, to depart from Lisle in eight-and-forty hours, and prohibiting their residence within twenty leagues from the frontiers.  Thus banished from their own habitations, they took refuge in different towns, at the prescribed distance; but, almost as soon as they were arrived, and had been at the expence of settling themselves, they were arrested as strangers,* and conducted to prison.

* I have before, I believe, noticed that the term estranger at this time did not exclusively apply to foreigners, but to such as had come from one town to another, who were at inns or on a visit to their friends.

It will not be improper to notice here the conduct of the government towards the towns that have been besieged.  Thionville,* to whose gallant defence in 1792 France owed the retreat of the Prussians and the safety of Paris, was afterwards continually reproached with aristocracy; and when the inhabitants sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the Convention threatened them from the tribune with “indemnities a coup de baton!” that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a good thrashing.