FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   >>  
is an object of particular suspicion, and that to have had a father or a husband executed, and to be reduced to beggary, are titles to farther persecution.--The politics of the day are, it is true, something less ferocious than they were: but confidence is not to be restored by an essay in the Orateur du Peuple,* or an equivocal harangue from the tribune; and I perceive every where, that those who have been most injured, are most timid. * _"L'Orateur du Peuple,"_ was a periodical paper published by Freron, many numbers of which were written with great spirit.-- Freron was at this time supposed to have become a royalist, and his paper, which was comparatively favourable to the aristocrats, was read with great eagerness. The following extract from the registers of one of the popular commissions will prove, that the fears of those who had already suffered by the revolution were well founded: "A. Sourdeville, and A. N. E. Sourdeville, sisters of an emigrant Noble, daughters of a Count, aristocrats, and having had their father and brother guillotined. "M. J. Sourdeville, mother of an emigrant, an aristocrat, and her husband and son having been guillotined. "Jean Marie Defille--very suspicious--a partizan of the Abbe Arnoud and La Fayette, has had a brother guillotined, and always shewn himself indifferent about the public welfare." The commissions declare that the above are condemned to banishment. I did not reach this place till after the family had dined, and taking my soup and a dish of coffee, have escaped, under pretext of the headache, to my own room. I left our poet far gone in a classical description of a sort of Roman dresses, the drawings of which he had seen exhibited at the Lyceum, as models of an intended national equipment for the French citizens of both sexes; and my visit to Madame de St. E__m__d had incapacitated me for discussing revolutionary draperies. In England, this is the season of festivity to the little, and beneficence in the great; but here, the sterile genius of atheism has suppressed the sounds of mirth, and closed the hands of charity--no season is consecrated either to the one or the other; and the once-varied year is but an uniform round of gloom and selfishness. The philosopher may treat with contempt the notion of periodical benevolence, and assert that we should not wait to be reminded
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   >>  



Top keywords:

guillotined

 

Sourdeville

 
periodical
 
season
 

aristocrats

 
commissions
 

emigrant

 
Freron
 

brother

 

Peuple


Orateur
 

husband

 

father

 

taking

 

models

 

coffee

 

intended

 

family

 

citizens

 

equipment


national
 

Lyceum

 
French
 

exhibited

 

drawings

 
dresses
 

description

 

pretext

 

classical

 

headache


escaped

 

varied

 

uniform

 

charity

 

consecrated

 
selfishness
 

philosopher

 

reminded

 

assert

 

benevolence


contempt

 

notion

 

closed

 

discussing

 

revolutionary

 
draperies
 
incapacitated
 

Madame

 
England
 

atheism