Time passes sorrowly, rather than slowly; and my thoughts, without being amused, are employed.  The novelty of our situation, the past, the future, all offer so many subjects of reflection, that my mind has more occasion for repose than amusement.  My only external resource is conversing with our fellow-prisoners, and learning the causes of their detention.  These relations furnish me with a sort of “abstract of the times,” and mark the character of the government better than circumstances of more apparent consequence; for what are battles, sieges, and political machinations, but as they ultimately affect the happiness of society?  And when I learn that the lives, the liberty, and property of no class are secure from violation, it is not necessary one should be at Paris to form an opinion of this period of the revolution, and of those who conduct it.

The persecution which has hitherto been chiefly directed against the Noblesse, has now a little subsided, and seems turned against religion and commerce.  People are daily arrested for assisting at private masses, concealing images, or even for being possessors of religious books.  Merchants are sent here as monopolizers, and retailers, under various pretexts, in order to give the committees an opportunity of pillaging their shops.  It is not uncommon to see people of the town who are our guards one day, become our fellow-prisoners the next; and a few weeks since, the son of an old gentleman who has been some time here, after being on guard the whole day, instead of being relieved at the usual hour, was joined by his wife and children, under the escort of a couple of dragoons, who delivered the whole family into the custody of our keeper; and this appears to have happened without any other motive than his having presented a petition to Dumont in behalf of his father.

An old man was lately taken from his house in the night, and brought here, because he was said to have worn the cross of St. Louis.—­The fact is, however, that he never did wear this obnoxious distinction; and though his daughter has proved this incontrovertibly to Dumont, she cannot obtain his liberty:  and the poor young woman, after making two or three fruitless journeys to Paris, is obliged to content herself with seeing her father occasionally at the gate.

The refectory of the convent is inhabited by hospital nuns.  Many of the hospitals in France had a sort of religious order annexed to them, whose business it was to attend the sick; and habit, perhaps too the association of the offices of humanity with the duties of religion, had made them so useful in their profession, that they were suffered to remain, even after the abolition of the regular monasteries.  But the devastating torrent of the revolution at length reached them:  they were accused of bestowing a more tender solicitude on their aristocratic patients than on the wounded volunteers and republicans; and, upon these curious charges, they have been heaped into carts, without a single necessary, almost without covering, sent from one department to another, and distributed in different prisons, where they are perishing with cold, sickness, and want!  Some people are here only because they happened to be accidentally at a house when the owner was arrested;* and we have one family who were taken at dinner, with their guests, and the plate they were using!