Yet such is the submission of the
people to a government they abhor, that it is scarcely thought requisite
now to arrest any person formally: those whom it is intended to secure
often receive nothing more than a written mandate* to betake themselves
to a certain prison, and such unpleasant rendezvous are attended with
more punctuality than the most ceremonious visit, or the most gallant
assignation.
* These rescripts were usually couched in the following terms:--
"Citizen, you are desired to betake yourself immediately to ------,
(naming the prison,) under pain of being conveyed there by an armed
force in case of delay."
--A few necessaries are hastily packed together, the adieus are made,
and, after a walk to their prison, they lay their beds down in the corner
allotted, just as if it were a thing of course.
It was a general observation with travellers, that the roads in France
were solitary, and had rather the deserted appearance of the route of a
caravan, than of the communications between different parts of a rich and
populous kingdom. This, however, is no longer true, and, as far as I can
learn, they are now sufficiently crowded--not, indeed, by curious
itinerants, parties of pleasure, or commercial industry, but by Deputies
of the Convention,* agents of subsistence,** committee men, Jacobin
missionaries,*** troops posting from places where insurrection is just
quelled to where it has just begun, besides the great and never-failing
source of activity, that of conveying suspected people from their homes
to prison, and from one prison to another.
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