m, in
that assumed character, a box at one of their festivals.

I was willing to indulge myself in an hope that this second appearance
of ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind; but, alas!
Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined that
his opera procession should have been the prototype of the real
appearance of the representatives of all the sovereigns of Europe
themselves, to make the same prostration that was made by those who
dared to represent their people in a complaint against them. But in this
the French Republic has followed, as they always affect to do, and have
hitherto done with success, the example of the ancient Romans, who shook
all governments by listening to the complaints of their subjects, and
soon after brought the kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this
last ceremony the ambassadors had not Clootz for their Cotterel. Pity
that Clootz had not had a reprieve from the guillotine till he had
completed his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen
upon all the dignity of the earth.

On this their gaudy day the new Regicide Directory sent for that
diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely
worse in degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their
nations, one after another, much in the manner in which they called
wretches out of their prison to the guillotine. When these ambassadors
of infamy appeared before them, the chief Director, in the name of the
rest, treated each of them with a short, affected, pedantic, insolent,
theatric laconium,--a sort of epigram of contempt. When they had thus
insulted them in a style and language which never before was heard, and
which no sovereign would for a moment endure from another, supposing any
of them frantic enough to use it, to finish their outrage, they drummed
and trumpeted the wretches out of their hall of audience.

Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to
represent the King of Prussia. To this worthy representative they did
not so much as condescend to mention his master; they did not seem to
know that he had one; they addressed themselves solely to Prussia in the
abstract, notwithstanding the infinite obligation they owed to their
early protector for their first recognition and alliance, and for the
part of his territory he gave into their hands for the first-fruits of
his homage. None but dead monarchs are so much as ment