to be carrying
on by the persons confined. This charge and this evidence suffice: the
prisoners are sent to the tribunal, their names read over, and they are
conveyed by cart's-full to the republican butchery. Many whom I have
known, and been in habits of intimacy with, have perished in this manner;
and the expectation of Le Bon,* with our numbers which make us of too
much consequence to be forgotten, all contribute to depress and alarm me.

* Le Bon had at this period sent for lists of the prisoners in the
department of the Somme--which lists are said to have been since
found, and many of the names in them marked for destruction.

--Even the levity of the French character yields to this terrible
despotism, and nothing is observed but weariness, silence, and sorrow:--
_"O triste loisir, poids affreux du tems."_ [St. Lambert.] The season
returns with the year, but not to us--the sun shines, but to add to our
miseries that of insupportable heat--and the vicissitudes of nature only
awaken our regret that we cannot enjoy them--

"Now gentle gales o'er all the vallies play,
"Breathe on each flow'r, and bear their sweets away."
[Collins.]

Yet what are fresh air and green fields to us, who are immured amidst a
thousand ill scents, and have no prospect but filth and stone walls? It
is difficult to describe how much the mind is depressed by this state of
passive suffering. In common evils, the necessity of action half
relieves them, as a vessel may reach her port by the agitation of a
storm; but this stagnant listless existence is terrible.

Those most to be envied here are the victims of their religious opinions.
The nuns, who are more distressed than any of us,* employ themselves
patiently, and seem to look beyond this world; whilst the once gay deist
wanders about with a volume of philosophy in his hand, unable to endure
the present, and dreading still more the future.

* These poor women, deprived of the little which the rapacity of the
Convention had left them, by it subordinate agents, were in want of
every thing; and though in most prisons they were employed for the
republican armies, they could scarcely procure more than bread and
water. Yet this was not all: they were objects of the meanest and
most cruel persecution.--I knew one who was put in a dungeon, up to
her waist in putrid water, for twelve hours altog