had been unable to sustain the shock of these repeated calamities, and
that her life or understanding had been the sacrifice. It were, indeed,
happy for the sufferer, if our days were always terminated when they
became embittered, or that we lost the sense of sorrow by its excess: but
it is not so--we continue to exist when we have lost the desire of
existence, and to reason when feeling and reason constitute our torments.
Madame de St. E__m__d then lives, but lives in affliction; and having
collected the wreck of her personal property, which some friends had
concealed, she left the part of France she formerly inhabited, and is now
with an aunt in this neighbourhood, watching the decay of her eldest
sister, and educating the youngest.
Clementine was consumptive when they were first arrested, and vexation,
with ill-treatment in the prison, have so established her disorder, that
she is now past relief. She is yet scarcely eighteen, and one of the
most lovely young women I ever saw. Grief and sickness have ravaged her
features; but they are still so perfect, that fancy, associating their
past bloom with their present languor, supplies perhaps as much to the
mind as is lost by the eye. She suffers without complaining, and mourns
without ostentation; and hears her father spoken of with such solemn
silent floods of tears, that she looks like the original of Dryden's
beautiful portrait of the weeping Sigismunda.
The letter which condemned the father of these ladies, was not, it seems,
written to himself, but to a brother, lately dead, whose executor he was,
and of whose papers he thus became possessed. On this ground their
friends engaged them to petition the Assembly for a revision of the
sentence, and the restoration of their property, which was in consequence
forfeited.
The daily professions of the Convention, in favour of justice and
humanity, and the return of the seventy-three imprisoned Deputies, had
soothed these poor young women with the hopes of regaining their paternal
inheritance, so iniquitously confiscated. A petition was, therefore,
forwarded to Paris about a fortnight ago; and the day before, the
following decree was issued, which has silenced their claims for ever:
"La Convention Nationale declare qu'elle n'admettra aucune demande en
revision des jugemens criminels portant confiscation de biens rendus et
executes pendant la revolution."*
* "The National Convention hereby declares that it will admit no
petitions for the revisal of such criminal sentences, attended with
confiscation of property, as have been passed and executed since the
revolution."
Yet these revolutionists, who would hear nothing of repairing their
own injustice, had occasionally been annulling sentences past half a
century ago, and the more recent one of the Chevalier La Barre. But
their own executions and confiscations for an adherence to religion
were to be held sacred.--I shall be excused for introducing here a
few words respecting the affair of La Barre, which has been a
favourite topic with popular writers of a certain description. The
severity of the punishment must, doubtless, be considered as
disgraceful to those who advised as well as to those who sanctioned
it: but we must not infer from hence that he merited no punishment
at all; and perhaps degradation, some scandalous and public
correction, with a few years solitary confinement, might have
answered every purpose intended.
La Barre was a young etourdi, under twenty, but of lively talents,
which, unfortunately for him, had taken a very perverse turn. The
misdemeanour commonly imputed to him and his associates was, that
they had mutilated a Christ which stood on the Pont-neuf at
Abbeville: but La Barre had accustomed himself to take all
opportunities of insulting, with the most wanton malignity, these
pious representations, and especially in the presence of people,
with whom his particular connections led him to associate, and whose
profession could not allow them entirely to overlook such affronts
on what was deemed an appendage to the established religion of the
country.
The people of Abbeville manifested their sense of the business when
d'Etalonde, La Barre's intimate friend, who had saved himself by
flight, returned, after a long exile, under favour of the
revolution. He was received in the neighbourhood with the most
mortifying indifference.
The decree of the Convention too, by which the memory of this
imprudent young man was re-established, when promulgated, created
about as much interest as any other law which did not immediately
affect the property or awaken the apprehensions of the hearers.
Madame de St. E__m__d told me her whole fortune was now reduced to a few
Louis, and about six or seven thousand livres in diamonds; that she was
unwilling to burden her aunt, who was not rich, and intended to make some
advantage of her musical talents, which are indeed considerable. But I
could not, without anguish, hear an elegant young woman, with a heart
half broken, propose to get her living by teaching music.--I know not
that I ever passed a more melancholy day. In the afternoon we walked up
and down the path of the village church-yard. The church was shut up,
the roof in part untiled, the windows were broken, and the wooden crosses
that religion or tenderness had erected to commemorate the dead, broken
and scattered about. Two labourers, and a black-smith in his working
garb, came while we were there, and threw a sort of uncouth wooden coffin
hastily into a hole dug for the purpose, which they then covered and left
without farther ceremony. Yet this was the body of a lady regretted by a
large family, who were thus obliged to conquer both their affection and
their prejudices, and inter her according to the republican mode.*
* The relations or friends of the dead were prohibited, under severe
penalties, from following their remains to the grave.
I thought, while we traversed the walk, and beheld this scene, that every
thing about me bore the marks of the revolution. The melancholy objects
I held on my arm, and the feeble steps of Clementine, whom we could
scarcely support, aided the impression; and I fear that, for the moment,
I questioned the justice of Heaven, in permitting such a scourge to be
let loose upon its works.
I quitted Madame de St. E__m__d this morning with reluctance, for we
shall not meet again till I am entirely at liberty. The village
municipality where she now resides, are quiet and civil, and her
misfortunes make her fearful of attracting the notice of the people in
authority of a large place, so that she cannot venture to Amiens.--You
must observe, that any person who has suffered 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 by religion or the calendar, in
order to contribute to the relief of our fellow creatures: yet there are
people who are influenced by custom and duty, that are not always awake
to compassion; and indolence or avarice may yield a too ready obedience
to prohibitions which favour both. The poor are certainly no gainers by
the substitution of philosophy for religion; and many of those who are
forbidden to celebrate Christmas or Easter by a mass, will forget to do
it by a donation. For my own part, I think it an advantage that any
period of the year is more particularly signalized by charity; and I
rejoice when I hear of the annual gifts of meat or firing of such, or
such a great personage--and I never enquire whether they might still
continue their munificence if Christianity were abolished.--Adieu.