son avoided with abhorrence. They talk much here of a gentleman, of
very democratic principles, who left the prison before I came. It seems,
that, notwithstanding Dumont condescended to visit at his house, and was
on terms of intimacy with him, he was arrested, and not distinguished
from the rest of his countrymen, except by being more harshly treated.
The case of this unfortunate gentleman was rendered peculiarly amusing to
his companions, and mortifying to himself, by his having a very pretty
mistress, who had sufficient influence over Dumont to obtain any thing
but the liberation of her protector. The Deputy was on this head
inflexible; doubtless, as a proof of his impartial observance of the
laws, and to show that, like the just man in Horace, he despised the
clamour of the vulgar, who did not scruple to hint, that the crime of our
countryman was rather of a moral than a political nature--that he was
unaccommodating, and recalcitrant--addicted to suspicions and jealousies,
which it was thought charitable to cure him of, by a little wholesome
seclusion. In fact, the summary of this gentleman's history is not
calculated to tempt his fellow societists on your side of the water to
imitate his example.--After taking refuge in France from the tyranny and
disappointments he experienced in England, and purchasing a large
national property to secure himself the rights of a citizen, he is
awakened from his dream of freedom, to find himself lodged in a prison,
his estate under sequestration, and his mistress in requisition.--Let us
leave this Coriolanus among the Volscians--it is a persecution to make
converts, rather than martyrs, and

_"Quand le malheur ne seroit bon,
"Qu'a mettre un sot a la raison,
"Toujours seroit-ce a juste cause
"Qu'on le dit bon a quelque chose."_*

* If calamity were only good to restore a fool to his senses, still
we might justly say, "that it was good for some thing."

Yours, &c.

March 5, 1794.

Of what strange influence is this word revolution, that it should thus,
like a talisman of romance, keep inchained, as it were, the reasoning
faculties of twenty millions of people! France is at this moment looking
for the decision of its fate in the quarrels of two miserable clubs,
composed of individuals who are either despised or detested. The
municipality of Paris favours the Cordeliers, the Convention the
Jacobins;