wn stairs through the house. I am trying
by description to make you see the place in your mind, because it will
assist the story I have to tell; and which I think you can do, because
you once called upon me there on account of Sir [Robert Smyth], who was
then, as I was soon afterwards, in arrestation. But it was winter when
you came, and it is a summer scene I am describing.

*****

I went into my chambers to write and sign a certificate for them, which
I intended to take to the guard house to obtain their release. Just as I
had finished it a man came into my room dressed in the Parisian uniform
of a captain, and spoke to me in good English, and with a good address.
He told me that two young men, Englishmen, were arrested and detained
in the guard house, and that the section, (meaning those who represented
and acted for the section,) had sent him to ask me if I knew them,
in which case they would be liberated. This matter being soon settled
between us, he talked to me about the Revolution, and something about
the "Rights of Man," which he had read in English; and at parting
offered me in a polite and civil manner, his services. And who do you
think the man was that offered me his services? It was no other than the
public executioner Samson, who guillotined the king, and all who were
guillotined in Paris; and who lived in the same section, and in the same
street with me.

*****

As to myself, I used to find some relief by walking alone in the garden
after dark, and cursing with hearty good will the authors of that
terrible system that had turned the character of the Revolution I had
been proud to defend.

I went but little to the Convention, and then only to make my
appearance; because I found it impossible to join in their tremendous
decrees, and useless and dangerous to oppose them. My having voted and
spoken extensively, more so than any other member, against the execution
of the king, had already fixed a mark upon me: neither dared any of my
associates in the Convention to translate and speak in French for me
anything I might have dared to have written.

*****

Pen and ink were then of no use to me: no good could be done by writing,
and no printer dared to print; and whatever I might have written for
my private amusement, as anecdotes of the times, would have been
continually exposed to be examined, and tortured into any meaning that
the rage of party might fix upon it; and as to softer subjects, my heart