“Now gentle gales o’er all the vallies play,
“Breathe on each flow’r, and bear their sweets away.”
[Collins.]

Yet what are fresh air and green fields to us, who are immured amidst a thousand ill scents, and have no prospect but filth and stone walls?  It is difficult to describe how much the mind is depressed by this state of passive suffering.  In common evils, the necessity of action half relieves them, as a vessel may reach her port by the agitation of a storm; but this stagnant listless existence is terrible.

Those most to be envied here are the victims of their religious opinions.  The nuns, who are more distressed than any of us,* employ themselves patiently, and seem to look beyond this world; whilst the once gay deist wanders about with a volume of philosophy in his hand, unable to endure the present, and dreading still more the future.

* These poor women, deprived of the little which the rapacity of the Convention had left them, by it subordinate agents, were in want of every thing; and though in most prisons they were employed for the republican armies, they could scarcely procure more than bread and water.  Yet this was not all:  they were objects of the meanest and most cruel persecution.—­I knew one who was put in a dungeon, up to her waist in putrid water, for twelve hours altogether, without losing her resolution or serenity.

I have already written you a long letter, and bid you adieu with the reluctance which precedes an uncertain separation.  Uneasiness, ill health, and confinement, besides the danger I am exposed to, render my life at present more precarious than “the ordinary of nature’s tenures.”  --God knows when I may address you again!--My friend Mad. de ____ is returned from the hospital, and I yield to her fears by ceasing to write, though I am nevertheless determined not to part with what I have hitherto preserved; being convinced, that if evil be intended us, it will be as soon without a pretext as with one.—­Adieu.

Providence, Aug. 11, 1794.

I have for some days contemplated the fall of Robespierre and his adherents, only as one of those dispensations of Providence, which were gradually to pursue all who had engaged in the French revolution.  The late change of parties has, however, taken a turn I did not expect; and, contrary to what has hitherto occurred, there is a manifest disposition in the people to avail themselves of the weakness which is necessarily occasioned by the contentions of their governors.

When the news of this extraordinary event first became public, it was ever where received with great gravity—­I might say, coldness.—­Not a comment was uttered, nor a glance of approbation seen.  Things might be yet in equilibrium, and popular commotions are always uncertain.  Prudence was, therefore, deemed, indispensable; and, until the contest was finally decided, no one ventured to give an opinion; and many, to be certain of guarding against verbal indiscretion, abstained from all intercourse whatever.