e house was already full,
and that there was no possibility of admitting us. We however, set up
all night in the keeper's room with some other people newly arrived like
ourselves, and in the morning, after a little disputing and a pretty
general derangement of the more ancient inhabitants, we were "nichees,"
as I have described to you.

We have not yet quitted our room much, but I observe that every one
appears more chearful, and more studied in their toilette, than at the
Bicetre, and I am willing to infer from thence that confinement here is
less insupportable.--I have been employed two days in enlarging the notes
I had made in our last prison, and in making them more legible, for I
ventured no farther than just to scribble with a pencil in a kind of
short-hand of my own invention, and not even that without a variety of
precautions. I shall be here less liable either to surprize or
observation, and as soon as I have secured what I have already noted,
(which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual
form. You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want
of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as
a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands of French
republicans.

It will not be improper to notice to you a very ingenious decree of
Gaston, (a member of the Convention,) who lately proposed to embark all
the English now in France at Brest, and then to sink the ships.--Perhaps
the Committee of Public Welfare are now in a sort of benevolent
indecision, whether this, or Collot d'Herbois' gunpowder scheme, shall
have the preference. Legendre's iron cage and simple hanging will,
doubtless, be rejected, as too slow and formal. The mode of the day is
"les grandes mesures." If I be not seriously alarmed at these
propositions, it is not that life is indifferent to me, or that I think
the government too humane to adopt them. My tranquillity arises from
reflecting that such measures would be of no political use, and that we
shall most likely be soon forgotten in the multitude of more important
concerns. Those, however, whom I endeavour to console by this reasoning,
tell me it is nothing less than infallible, that the inutility of a crime
is here no security against its perpetration, and that any project which
tends to evil will sooner be remembered than one of humanity or justice.

[End of Vol. I. The Printed Books]

[Beginning of Volum