virtue of the law, which Barrere aptly denominated the law of prehension,
and which, according to the terms of the decree itself, was not
applicable to the case in question.

"At length our sectionary decemvirs, who thus placed themselves above the
law, discovered the grant of my father-in-law's pension, which, like all
similar grants, being excluded from the privilege of inscription on the
great register of public debts, had been left in his port-folio; and
which began, as all such grants necessarily must, with the words, Louis,
&c. "Heaven!" exclaimed the Commissaries, "here is the very name of the
tyrant!" And, as soon as they recovered their breaths, which had been
nearly stopped by the violence of the indignation, they coolly pocketed
the grant, that is to say, an annuity of one thousand livres, and sent
off the porridge-pot. Nor did these constitute all the crimes of Citizen
Duplessis, who, having served as first clerk of the revenue board under
Clugny, had, as was usual, kept the official seal of that day. An old
port-folio, which had been thrown aside, and long forgotten, under a
wardrobe, where it was buried in dust, and had, in all probability, not
been touched for ten years, but, which with much difficulty, was
discovered to bear the impression of a fleur de lys, completed the proof
that Citizen Duplessis was a suspicious character. And now behold him
shut up in a prison until peace shall be concluded, and the seals put
upon all the doors of that country seat, where, you may remember, my dear
Freron, that at the time when warrants were issued for apprehending us
both, after the massacre in the Champ de Mars, we found an asylum which
the tyrant did not dare to violate."

--In a word, you must generally understand, that the revolutionary system
supersedes law, religion, and morality; and that it invests the
Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety, their agents, the
Jacobin clubs, and subsidiary banditti, with the disposal of the whole
country and its inhabitants.

This gloomy aera of the revolution has its frivolities as well as the
less disastrous periods, and the barbarism of the moment is rendered
additionally disgusting by a mixture of levity and pedantry.--It is a
fashion for people at present to abandon their baptismal and family
names, and to assume that of some Greek or Roman, which the debates of
the Convention have made familiar.--France swarms with Gracchus's and
Publicolas, who by ima