The
royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated;
and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk
of emigration.
I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with
various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on
an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg
St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on
the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary
to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty
appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found
the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine
or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of
this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they
knew what was passing around them, Monsieur du G--------'s forty years'
service, and his croix, had rendered him suspected, and that he and his
wife were taken from their beds at midnight and carried to prison. Here
they consumed their stock of ready money, while a guard, placed in their
house, pillaged what was moveable, and spoiled what could not be
pillaged. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor they were released, but they
returned to bare walls, and their annuity, being paid in assignats, now
scarcely affords them a subsistence.
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