st be ever
dear to her. Occasionally a little humorous pleasantry interrupted the
more tender outpourings in her letters. Just as, according to Jean Paul,
a man can only afford to ridicule his religion when his faith is firm, so
it was only when her confidence in Imlay was most secure that she could
speak lightly of her love. To the reader of her life, who can see the
snake lurking in the grass, her mirth is more tragical than her grief. On
the 26th of October, Imlay having now been absent for over a month, she
writes:--

"I have almost _charmed_ a judge of the tribunal, R., who, though I
should not have thought it possible, has humanity, if not _beaucoup
d'esprit_. But, let me tell you, if you do not make haste back, I
shall be half in love with the author of the _Marseillaise_, who is
a handsome man, a little too broad-faced or so, and plays sweetly
on the violin.

"What do you say to this threat?--why, _entre nous_, I like to
give way to a sprightly vein when writing to you. 'The devil,' you
know, is proverbially said to 'be in a good humor when he is
pleased.'"

Many of her old friends in the capital had been numbered among the
children devoured by the insatiable monster. A few, however, were still
left, and she seems to have made new ones and to have again gone into
Parisian society. The condition of affairs was more conducive to social
pleasures than it had been the year before. Robespierre was dead. There
were others besides Mary who feared "the last flap of the tail of the
beast;" but, as a rule, the people, now the reaction had come, were
over-confident, and the season was one of merry-making. There were fetes
and balls. Even mourning for the dead became the signal for rejoicing;
and gay Parisians, their arms tied with crape, danced to the memory of
the victims of the late national delirium. The Reign of Terror was over,
but so was Mary's happiness. Public order was partly restored, but her
own short-lived peace was rudely interrupted. Imlay in London became more
absorbed in his immediate affairs, a fact which he could not conceal in
his letters; and Mary realized that compared to business she was of
little or no importance to him. She expostulated earnestly with him on
the folly of allowing money cares and ambitions to preoccupy him. She
sincerely sympathized with him in his disappointments, but she could not
understand his willingness to sacrifice sentiment