and I grow impatient, not having sang froid
enough for a true French ennuie in a situation that would tempt one to
hang one's self.

March, 1794.

The aspect of the times promises no change in our favour; on the
contrary, every day seems to bring its attendant evil. The gentry who
had escaped the comprehensive decree against suspected people, are now
swept away in this and the three neighbouring departments by a private
order of the representatives, St. Just, Lebas, and Dumont.*

* The order was to arrest, without exception, all the ci-devant
Noblessse, men, women, and children, in the departments of the
Somme, North, and Pas de Calais, and to exclude them rigourously
from all external communication--(mettre au secret).

--A severer regimen is to be adopted in the prisons, and husbands are
already separated from their wives, and fathers from their daughters, for
the purpose, as it is alledged, of preserving good morals. Both this
place and the Bicetre being too full to admit of more inhabitants, two
large buildings in the town are now appropriated to the male prisoners.--
My friends continue at Arras, and, I fear, in extreme distress. I
understand they have been plundered of what things they had with them,
and the little supply I was able to send them was intercepted by some of
the harpies of the prisons. Mrs. D____'s health has not been able to
sustain these accumulated misfortunes, and she is at present at the
hospital. All this is far from enlivening, even had I a larger share of
the national philosophy; and did I not oftener make what I observe, than
what I suffer, the subject of my letters, I should tax your patience as
much by repetition, as I may by dullness.

When I enumerated in my last letters a few of the obligations the French
have to their friends in England, I ought also to have observed, with how
little gratitude they behave to those who are here. Without mentioning
Mr. Thomas Paine, whose persecution will doubtless be recorded by abler
pens, nothing, I assure you, can be more unpleasant than the situation of
one of these Anglo-Gallican patriots. The republicans, supposing that an
Englishman who affects a partiality for them can be only a spy, execute
all the laws, which concern foreigners, upon him with additional rigour;*
and when an English Jacobin arrives in prison, far from meeting with
consolation or sympathy, his distresses are beheld with triumph, and his
per