some
empire, when every other vestige of civilization was almost annihilated.

After such an exordium, I feel a little ashamed of my hero, and could
wish, for the credit of my tale, it were not more necessary to invoke the
historic muse of Fielding, than that of Homer or Tasso; but imperious
Truth obliges me to confess, that Tallien, who is to be the subject of
this letter, was first introduced to celebrity by circumstances not
favourable for the comment of my poetical text.

At the beginning of the revolution he was known only as an eminent orator
en plain vent; that is, as a preacher of sedition to the mob, whom he
used to harangue with great applause at the Palais Royal. Having no
profession or means of subsistence, he, as Dr. Johnson observes of one of
our poets, necessarily became an author. He was, however, no farther
entitled to this appellation, than as a periodical scribbler in the cause
of insurrection; but in this he was so successful, that it recommended
him to the care of Petion and the municipality, to whom his talents and
principles were so acceptable, that they made him Secretary to the
Committee.

On the second and third of September 1792, he superintended the massacre
of the prisons, and is alledged to have paid the assassins according to
the number of victims they dispatched with great regularity; and he
himself seems to have little to say in his defence, except that he acted
officially. Yet even the imputation of such a claim could not be
overlooked by the citizens of Paris; and at the election of the
Convention he was distinguished by being chosen one of their
representatives.

It is needless to describe his political career in the Assembly otherwise
than by adding, that when the revolutionary furor was at its acme, he was
deemed by the Committee of Public Welfare worthy of an important mission
in the South. The people of Bourdeaux were, accordingly, for some time
harassed by the usual effects of these visitations--imprisonments and the
Guillotine; and Tallien, though eclipsed by Maignet and Carrier, was by
no means deficient in the patriotic energies of the day.

I think I must before have mentioned to you a Madame de Fontenay, the
wife of an emigrant, whom I occasionally saw at Mad. de C____'s. I then
remarked her for the uncommon attraction of her features, and the
elegance of her person; but was so much disgusted at a tendency to
republicanism I observed in her, and which, in a young w