f pamphlets and newspapers one day, and are obliged to liberate
them the next.--They exclaim publicly against the system of terror, yet
secretly court the assistance of its agents.--They affect to respect the
liberty of the press, yet every new publication has to defend itself
against the whole force of the government, if it happen to censure a
single member of the reigning party.--Thus, the _Memoirs of Dumouriez_
had circulated nearly through all Europe, yet it was not without much
risk, and after a long warfare, that they were printed in France.*

*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted
the maxim--that prevention is better than punishment; for, in
several instances, they seized on manuscripts, and laid embargoes on
the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which
they might disapprove was intended to be published.

I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that
the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than
external. The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one
expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event. The
royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated;
and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk
of emigration.

I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with
various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on
an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg
St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on
the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary
to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty
appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found
the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine
or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of
this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they
knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G--------'s forty years'
service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his
wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison. Here
they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their
house, pillaged what was moveable, and spoiled what could not be
pillaged. Soon after the ninth of Thermid