wrecked; the humble and unobtrusive
virtues of domestic life seemed mean and insignificant beside the grand
displays of patriotic devotion which each day exhibited.

Hence grew the taste for that "life of the streets," then so popular;
every thing should be "en evidence." All the emotions which delicacy
would render sacred to the seclusion of home, were now to be paraded to
the noonday. Fathers were reconciled to rebellious children before the
eyes of multitudes; wives received forgiveness from their husbands in
the midst of approving crowds; leave-takings, the most affecting,
partings, for those never to meet again, the last utterings of the
death-bed, the faint whispers of expiring affection, the imprecations of
undying hate, all, all were exhibited in public, and the gaze of the
low, the vulgar, and the debauched, associated with the most agonizing
griefs that ever the heart endured. The scenes, which now are shrouded
in all the secrecy of domestic privacy, were then the daily life of
Paris; and to this cause alone can I attribute the hardened indifference
with which events the most terrible and heart-rending were witnessed.
Bred up amidst such examples, I saw little matter for emotion in scenes
of harrowing interest. An air of mockery was on every thing, and a
bastard classicality destroyed every semblance of truth in whatever
would have been touching and affecting.

The commotion of Paris on that memorable morning was, then, to my
thinking, little more than usual. If the crowds who pressed their way to
"The Place de la Revolution" were greater; if the cries of vengeance
were in louder utterance; if the imprecations were deeper and more
terrible, the ready answer, that satisfied all curiosity, was--it was
Robespierre, who was on his way to be executed. Little knew I what hung
upon that life! and now the fate of millions depended upon the blood
that morning was to shed. Too full of myself and my own projects, I
disengaged myself from the crowds that pressed eagerly toward the
Tuileries, and took my way by less frequented streets in the direction
of the Boulevard Mont Parnasse.

I wished, if possible, to see the Pere once more, to take a last
farewell of him, and ask his blessing, too; for still a lingering faith
in the lessons he had taught me, continued to haunt my mind, amidst all
the evil influences with which my wayward life surrounded me. The
further I went from the quarter of the Tuileries, the more deserted