He is
_desole, desespere, or afflige_--he has _le coeur trop sensible, le coeur
serre, or le coeur navre;_ [Afflicted--in despair--too feeling a heart--
his heart is wrung or wounded.] and the well-placing of these dolorous
assertions depends rather upon the judgement and eloquence of the
speaker, than the seriousness of the case which gives rise to them. For
instance, the despair and desolation of him who has lost his money, and
of him whose head is ill drest, are of different degrees, but the
expressions are usually the same. The debates of the Convention, the
debates of the Jacobins, and all the public prints, are fraught with
proofs of this appropriated susceptibility, and it is often attributed to
persons and occasions where we should not much expect to find it. A
quarrel between the legislators as to who was most concerned in promoting
the massacres of September, is reconciled with a "sweet and enthusiastic
excess of fraternal tenderness." When the clubs dispute on the
expediency of an insurrection, or the necessity of a more frequent
employment of the guillotine, the debate terminates by overflowing of
sensibility from all the members who have engaged in it!
At the assassinations in one of the prisons, when all the other miserable
victims had perished, the mob discovered one Jonneau, a member of the
Assembly, who had been confined for kicking another member named
Grangeneuve.
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