It is also certain,
that Brittany is in revolt, and that many other departments are little
short of it; yet you will not very easily conceive what may have occupied
the Convention during part of this important crisis--nothing less than
inventing a dress for their Commissioners! But, as Sterne says, "it is
the spirit of the nation;" and I recollect no circumstance during the
whole progress of the revolution (however serious) that has not been
mixed with frivolities of this kind.
I know not what effect this new costume may produce on the rebels or the
enemy, but I confess it appears to me more ludicrous than formidable,
especially when a representative happens to be of the shape and features
of the one we have here. Saladin, Deputy for this department, and an
advocate of the town of Amiens, has already invested himself with this
armour of inviolability; "strange figure in such strange habiliments,"
that one is tempted to forget that Baratraria and the government of
Sancho are the creation of fancy. Imagine to yourself a short fat man,
of sallow complexion and small eyes, with a sash of white, red, and blue
round his waist, a black belt with a sword suspended across his
shoulders, and a round hat turned up before, with three feathers of the
national colours: "even such a man" is our representative, and exercises
a more despotic authority than most Princes in Europe.--He is accompanied
by another Deputy, who was what is called Pere de la Oratoire before the
revolution--that is, in a station nearly approaching to that of an
under-master at our public schools; only that the seminaries to which
these were attached being very numerous, those employed in them were
little considered.
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