The day was
fine, a brilliant sun glittered on the banners, and a gentle breeze gave
them motion; while the satisfied countenances of the people added spirit
and animation to the whole.
I must remark to you, that devots, and determined aristocrates, ever
attend on these occasions. The piety of the one is shocked at a mass by
a priest who has taken the oaths, and the pride of the other is not yet
reconciled to confusion of ranks and popular festivities. I asked a
woman who brings us fruit every day, why she had not come on the
fourteenth as usual. She told me she did not come to the town, _"a cause
de la foederation"--"Vous etes aristocrate donc?"--"Ah, mon Dieu non--ce
n'est pas que je suis aristocrate, ou democrate, mais que je suis
Chretienne._*"
*"On account of the foederation."--"You are an aristocrate then, I
suppose?"--"Lord, no! It is not because I am an aristocrate, or a
democrate, but because I am a Christian."
This is an instance, among many others I could produce, that our
legislators have been wrong, in connecting any change of the national
religion with the revolution. I am every day convinced, that this and
the assignats are the great causes of the alienation visible in many who
were once the warmest patriots.--Adieu: do not envy us our fetes and
ceremonies, while you enjoy a constitution which requires no oath to make
you cherish it: and a national liberty, which is felt and valued without
the aid of extrinsic decoration.
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