Such an attention in a beautiful girl of eighteen was not very unnatural; yet the mean and cruel wretches who were her judges, had the littleness to endeavour at mortifying, by divesting her of her ornaments, and covering her with the most loathsome rags.  But a mind tortured to madness by the sufferings of her country, was not likely to be shaken by such puerile malice; and, when interrogated under this disguise, she still preserved the same firmness, mingled with contempt, which she had displayed when first apprehended.  No accusation, nor even implication, of any person could be drawn from her, and her only confession was that of a passionate loyalty:  yet an universal conspiracy was nevertheless decreed by the Convention to exist, and Miss Renaud, with sixty-nine others,* were sentenced to the guillotine, without farther trial than merely calling over their names.

* It is worthy of remark, that the sixty-nine people executed as accomplices of Miss Renaud, except her father, mother, and aunt, were totally unconnected with her, or with each other, and had been collected from different prisons, between which no communication could have subsisted.

—­They were conducted to the scaffold in a sort of red frocks, intended, as was alleged, to mark them as assassins—­but, in reality, to prevent the crowd from distinguishing or receiving any impression from the number of young and interesting females who were comprised in this dreadful slaughter.—­They met death with a courage which seemed almost to disappoint the malice of their tyrants, who, in an original excess of barbarity, are said to have lamented that their power of inflicting could not reach those mental faculties which enabled their victims to suffer with fortitude.*

* Fouquier Tinville, public accuser of the Revolutionary Tribunal, enraged at the courage with which his victims submitted to their fate, had formed the design of having them bled previous to their execution; hoping by this means to weaken their spirits, and that they might, by a pusillanimous behaviour in their last moments, appear less interesting to the people.

Such are the horrors now common to almost every part of France:  the prisons are daily thinned by the ravages of the executioner, and again repeopled by inhabitants destined to the fate of their predecessors.  A gloomy reserve, and a sort of uncertain foreboding, have taken possession of every body—­no one ventures to communicate his thoughts, even to his nearest friend—­relations avoid each other—­and the whole social system seems on the point of being dissolved.  Those who have yet preserved their freedom take the longest circuit, rather than pass a republican Bastille; or, if obliged by necessity to approach one, it is with downcast or averted looks, which bespeak their dread of incurring the suspicion of humanity.