rse to the little specie they have reserved, and exchange it
for paper. Immense sums in coin are purchased by the government, to make
good the balance of their trade with the neutral countries for
provisions, so that I should suppose, if this continue a few months, very
little will be left in the country.

One might be tempted to fancy there is something in the atmosphere of
Paris which adapts the minds of its inhabitants to their political
situation. They talk of the day appointed for a revolt a fortnight
before, as though it were a fete, and the most timid begin to be inured
to a state of agitation and apprehension, and to consider it as a natural
vicissitude that their lives should be endangered periodically.

A commission has been employed for some time in devising another new
constitution, which is to be proposed to the Assembly on the thirteenth
of this month; and on that day, it is said, an effort is to be made by
the royalists. They are certainly very numerous, and the interest taken
in the young King is universal. In vain have the journalists been
forbidden to cherish these sentiments, by publishing details concerning
him: whatever escapes the walls of his prison is circulated in impatient
whispers, and requires neither printing nor gazettes a la main to give it
publicity.*

* Under the monarchy people disseminated anecdotes or intelligence
which they did not think it safe to print, by means of these written
gazettes.--I doubt if any one would venture to have recourse to them
at present.

--The child is reported to be ill, and in a kind of stupefaction, so as
to sit whole days without speaking or moving: this is not natural at his
age, and must be the consequence of neglect, or barbarous treatment.

The Committees of Government, and indeed most of the Convention who have
occasionally appeared to give tacit indications of favouring the
royalists, in order to secure their support against the Jacobins, having
now crushed the latter, begin to be seriously alarmed at the projects of
the former.--Sevestre, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety,
has announced that a formidable insurrection may be expected on the
twenty-fifth of Prairial, (thirteenth June,) the Deputies on mission are
ordered to return, and the Assembly propose to die under the ruins of the
republic. They have, notwithstanding, judged it expedient to fortify
these heroic dispositions by the aid of a military force,