an, and _"Ah, mon Dieu, oui;"
"Une dixaine de pretres;"_ or, _"Une trentaine de nobles:"_ ["Did not some
people arrive in the night?"]--"Yes, God help us--half a score priests, or
twenty or thirty gentry." And I observe the depth of the groan is nearly
in proportion to the quality of the person she commiserates. Thus, a
groan for a Comte, a Marquise, or a Priest, is much more audible than one
for a simple gentlewoman or a merchant; and the arrival of a Bishop
(especially if not one of the constitutional clergy) is announced in a
more sorrowful key than either.

While I was walking in the yard this morning, I was accosted by a
female whom I immediately recollected to be Victoire, a very pretty
_couturiere,_ [Sempstress.] who used to work for me when I was at
Panthemont, and who made your last holland shirts. I was not a little
surprized to see her in such a situation, and took her aside to enquire
her history. I found that her mother was dead, and that her brother
having set up a little shop at St. Omer, had engaged her to go and live
with him. Being under five-and-twenty, the last requisition obliged him
to depart for the army, and leave her to carry on the business alone.
Three weeks after, she was arrested at midnight, put into a cart, and
brought hither. She had no time to take any precautions, and their
little commerce, which was in haberdashery, as well as some work she had
in hand, is abandoned to the mercy of the people that arrested her. She
has reason to suppose that her crime consists in not having frequented
the constitutional mass; and that her accuser is a member of one of the
town committees, who, since her brother's absence, has persecuted her
with dishonourable proposals, and, having been repulsed, has taken this
method of revenging himself. Her conjecture is most probably right, as,
since her imprisonment, this man has been endeavouring to make a sort of
barter with her for her release.

I am really concerned for this poor creature, who is at present a very
good girl, but if she remain here she will not only be deprived of her
means of living, but perhaps her morals may be irremediably corrupted.
She is now lodged in a room with ten or dozen men, and the house is so
crouded that I doubt whether I have interest enough to procure her a more
decent apartment.

What can this strange policy tend to, that thus exposes to ruin and want
a girl of one-and-twenty--not for any open violation of the law,