A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795 Part 40

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 a.s.signats, now scarcely affords them a subsistence.--Monsieur du G-------- is near seventy, and Madame is become helpless from a nervous complaint, the effect of fear and confinement; and if this depreciation of the paper should continue, these poor people may probably die of absolute want.

I dined with a relation of the Marquise's, and in the afternoon we called by appointment on a person who is employed by the Committee of National Domains, and who has long promised my friend to facilitate the adjustment of some of the various claims which the government has on her property.

This man was originally a valet to the brother of the Marquise: at the revolution he set up a shop, became a bankrupt, and a furious Jacobin, and, in the end, a member of a Revolutionary Committee. In the last capacity he found means to enrich himself, and intimidate his creditors so as to obtain a discharge of his debts, without the trouble of paying them.*

* "It was common for men in debt to procure themselves to be made members of a revolutionary committee, and then force their creditors to give them a receipt in full, under the fear of being imprisoned."

Clauzel's Report, Oct. 13, 1794.

I am myself acquainted with an old lady, who was confined four months, for having asked one of these patriots for three hundred livres which he owed her.

--Since the dissolution of the Committees, he has contrived to obtain the situation I have mentioned, and now occupies superb apartments in an hotel, amply furnished with the proofs of his official dexterity, and the perquisites of patriotism.

The humiliating vicissitudes occasioned by the revolution induced Madame de la F-------- to apply to this democratic _parvenu,_ [Upstart.] whose office at present gives him the power, and whose former obligations to her family (by whom he was brought up) she hoped would add the disposition, to serve her.--The grat.i.tude she expected has, however, ended only in delays and disappointments, and the sole object of my commission was to get some papers which she had entrusted to him out of his possession.

When we enquired if the Citizen was at home, a servant, not in livery, informed us Monsieur was dressing, but that if we would walk in, he would let Monsieur know we were there. We pa.s.sed through a dining parlour, where we saw the remains of a dessert, coffee, &c. and were a.s.sailed by the odours of a plentiful repast. As we entered the saloon, we heard the servant call at the door of an adjoining parlour, _"Monsieur, voici deux Citoyennes et un Citoyen qui vous demandent."_ ["Sir, here are two female citizens and one male citizen enquiring for you."] When Monsieur appeared, he apologized with an air of graciousness for the impossibility he had been under of getting my friend's affairs arranged--protested he was _accable_ [Oppressed..]--that he had scarcely an instant at his own disposal--that _enfin_ the responsibility of people in office was so terrible, and the fatigue so _a.s.sommante,_ [Overpowering.] that nothing but the purest _civism,_ and a heart _penetre de l'amour de la patrie,_ [Penetrated with the love of his country.] could enable him to persevere in the task imposed on him. As for the papers we required, he would endeavour to find them, though his cabinet was really so filled with pet.i.tions and certificates of all sorts, _que des malheureux lui avoient addresses,_ [Addressed to him by unfortunate people.] that it would not be very easy to find them at present; and, with this answer, which we should have smiled at from M. de Choiseul or Sartine, we were obliged to be satisfied. We then talked of the news of the day, and he lamented that the aristocrats were still restless and increasing in number, and that notwithstanding the efforts of the Convention to diffuse a spirit of philosophy, it was too evident there was yet much fanaticism among the people.

As we rose to depart, Madame entered, dressed for visiting, and decorated with bracelets on her wrists and above her elbows, medallions on her waists and neck, and, indeed, finery wherever it could possibly be bestowed. We observed her primitive condition of a waiting-woman still operated, and that far from affecting the language of her husband, she retained a great deference for rank, and was solicitous to insinuate that she was secretly of a superior way of thinking. As we left the room together, she made advances to an acquaintance with my companions (who were people of condition); and having occasion to speak to a person at the door, as she uttered the word _Citoyen_ she looked at us with an expression which she intended should imply the contempt and reluctance with which she made use of it.

I have in general remarked, that the republicans are either of the species I have just been describing, waiters, jockies, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more ignorant and brutal--and who dissipate what they have gained in gross luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both. These patriots are not, however, so uninformed, nor so disinterested, as to suppose they are to serve their country without serving themselves; and they perfectly understand, that the rich are their legal patrimony, and that it is enjoined them by their mission to pillage royalists and aristocrats.*

--Yours.

* Garat observes, it was a maxim of Danton, _"Que ceux qui fesaient les affaires de la republique devaient aussi faireles leurs,"_ that who undertook the care of the republic should also take care of themselves. This tenet, however, seems common to the friends of both.

Paris, June 6, 1795.

I had scarcely concluded my last, when I received advice of the death of Madame de la F--------; and though I have, almost from the time we quitted the Providence, thought she was declining, and that such an event was probable, it has, nevertheless, both shocked and grieved me.

Exclusively of her many good and engaging qualities, which were reasonable objects of attachment, Madame de la F-------- was endeared to me by those habits of intimacy that often supply the want of merit, and make us adhere to our early friendships, even when not sanctioned by our maturer judgment. Madame de la F-------- never became entirely divested of the effects of a convent education; but if she retained a love of trifling amus.e.m.e.nts, and a sort of infantine gaiety, she likewise continued pious, charitable, and strictly attentive not only to the duties, but to the decorum, essential in the female character and merits of this sort are, I believe, now more rare than those in which she might be deemed deficient.

I was speaking of her this morning to a lady of our acquaintance, who acquiesced in my friendly eulogiums, but added, in a tone of superiority, _"C'etoit pourtant une pet.i.te femme bien minutieuse_--she always put me out of patience with her birds and her flowers, her levees of poor people, and her persevering industry in frivolous projects." My friend was, indeed, the most feminine creature in the world, and this is a flippant literary lady, who talks in raptures of the Greeks and Romans, calls Rousseau familiarly Jean Jaques, frisks through the whole circle of science at the Lyceum, and has an utter contempt both for personal neatness and domestic oeconomy. How would Madame de Sevigne wonder, could she behold one of these modern belles esprits, with which her country, as well as England, abounds? In our zeal for reforming the irregular orthography and housewifely penmanship of the last century, we are all become readers, and authors, and critics. I do not a.s.sert, that the female mind is too much cultivated, but that it is too generally so; and that we encourage a taste for attainments not always compatible with the duties and occupations of domestic life. No age has, I believe, produced so many literary ladies as the present;* yet I cannot learn that we are at all improved in morals, or that domestic happiness is more universal than when, instead of writing sonnets to dew-drops or daisies,** we copied prayers and recipes, in spelling similar to that of Stowe or Hollingshed.

* Let me not be supposed to undervalue the female authors of the present day. There are some who, uniting great talents with personal worth, are justly ent.i.tled to our respect and admiration.

The auth.o.r.ess of "Cecilia," or the Miss Lees, cannot be confounded with the proprietors of all the Castles, Forests, Groves, Woods, Cottages, and Caverns, which are so alluring in the catalogue of a circulating library.

** Mrs. Smith's beautiful Sonnets have produced sonnetteers for every object in nature, visible or invisible; and her elegant translations of Petrarch have procured the Italian bard many an English dress that he would have been ashamed to appear in.

--We seem industrious to make every branch of education a vehicle for inspiring a premature taste for literary amus.e.m.e.nts; and our old fashioned moral adages in writing-books are replaced by sc.r.a.ps from "Elegant Extracts," while print-work and embroidery represent scenes from poems or novels. I allow, that the subjects formerly pourtrayed by the needle were not pictoresque, yet, the tendency considered, young ladies might as well employ their silk or pencils in exhibiting Daniel in the lions' den, or Joseph and his brethren, as Sterne's Maria, or Charlotte and Werter.

You will forgive this digression, which I have been led into on hearing the character of Madame de la F-------- depreciated, because she was only gentle and amiable, and did not read Plutarch, nor hold literary a.s.semblies. It is, in truth, a little amende I owe her memory, for I may myself have sometimes estimated her too lightly, and concluded my own pursuits more rational than hers, when possibly they were only different.

Her death has left an impression on my mind, which the turbulence of Paris is not calculated to soothe; but the short time we have to stay, and the number of people I must see, oblige me to conquer both my regret and my indolence, and to pa.s.s a great part of the day in running from place to place.

I have been employed all this morning in executing some female commissions, which, of course, led me to milliners, mantua-makers, &c.

These people now recommend fashions by saying one thing is invented by Tallien's wife, and another by Merlin de Thionville, or some other Deputy's mistress; and the genius of these elegantes has contrived, by a mode of dressing the hair which lengthens the neck, and by robes with an inch of waist, to give their countrywomen an appearance not much unlike that of a Bar Gander.

I saw yesterday a relation of Madame de la F--------, who is in the army, and whom I formerly mentioned as having met when we pa.s.sed through Dourlens. He was for some months suspended, and in confinement, but is now restored to his rank, and ordered on service. He asked me if I ever intended to visit France again. I told him I had so little reason to be satisfied with my treatment, that I did not imagine I should.--"Yes, (returned he,) but if the republic should conquer Italy, and bring all its treasures to Paris, as has lately been suggested in the Convention, we shall tempt you to return, in spite of yourself."*

*The project of pillaging Italy of its most valuable works of art was suggested by the philosophic Abbe Gregoire, a const.i.tutional Bishop, as early as September 1794, because, as he alledged, the chefs d'ouvres of the Greek republic ought not to embellish a country of slaves.

--I told him, I neither doubted their intending such a scheme, nor the possibility of its success, though it was not altogether worthy of philosophers and republicans to wage war for Venus's and Appollos, and to sacrifice the lives of one part of their fellow-citizens, that the rest might be amused with pictures and statues.--"That's not our affair (says Monsieur de --------). Soldiers do not reason. And if the Convention should have a fancy to pillage the Emperor of China's palace, I see no remedy but to set sail with the first fair wind,"--"I wish, (said his sister, who was the only person present,) instead of being under such orders, you had escaped from the service." "Yes, (returned the General quickly,) and wander about Europe like Dumouriez, suspected and despised by all parties." I observed, Dumouriez was an adventurer, and that on many accounts it was necessary to guard against him. He said, he did not dispute the necessity or even the justice of the conduct observed towards him, but that nevertheless I might be a.s.sured it had operated as an effectual check to those who might, otherwise, have been tempted to follow Dumouriez's example; "And we have now (added he, in a tone between gaiety and despair,) no alternative but obedience or the guillotine."--I have transcribed the substance of this conversation, as it confirms what I have frequently been told, that the fate of Dumouriez, however merited, is one great cause why no desertion of importance has since taken place.

I was just now interrupted by a noise and shouting near my window, and could plainly distinguish the words Scipio and Solon uttered in a tone of taunt and reproach. Not immediately comprehending how Solon or Scipio could be introduced in a fray at Paris, I dispatched Angelique to make enquiry; and at her return I learned that a croud of boys were following a shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who, while he was member of a revolutionary Committee, had chosen to unite in his person the glories of both Rome and Greece, of the sword and gown, and had taken unto himself the name of Scipio Solon. A decree of the Convention some weeks since enjoined all such heroes and sages to resume their original appellations, and forbade any person, however ardent his patriotism, to distinguish himself by the name of Brutus, Timoleon, or any other but that which he derived from his Christian parents. The people, it seems, are not so obedient to the decree as those whom it more immediately concerns; and as the above-mentioned Scipio Solon had been detected in various larcenies, he is not allowed to quit his shop without being reproached with his thefts, and his Greek and Roman appellations.

--I am, &c.

Paris, June 8, 1795.

Yesterday being Sunday, and to-day the Decade, we have had two holidays successively, though, since the people have been more at liberty to manifest their opinions, they give a decided preference to the Christian festival over that of the republic.*

* This was only at Paris, where the people, from their number, are less manageable, and of course more courageous. In the departments, the same cautious timidity prevailed, and appeared likely to continue.

--They observe the former from inclination, and the latter from necessity; so that between the performance of their religious duties, and the sacrifice to their political fears, a larger portion of time will be deducted from industry than was gained by the suppression of the Saints'

days. The Parisians, however, seem to acquiesce very readily in this compromise, and the philosophers of the Convention, who have so often declaimed against the idleness occasioned by the numerous fetes of the old calendar, obstinately persist in the adoption of a new one, which increases the evil they pretend to remedy.

If the people are to be taken from their labour for such a number of days, it might as well be in the name of St. Genevieve or St. Denis, as of the Decade, and the Saints'-days have at least this advantage, that the forenoons are pa.s.sed in churches; whereas the republican festivals, dedicated one to love, another to stoicism, and so forth, not conveying any very determinate idea, are interpreted to mean only an obligation to do nothing, or to pa.s.s some supernumerary hours at the cabaret.

[Alehouse.]

I noticed with extreme pleasure yesterday, that as many of the places of public worship as are permitted to be open were much crouded, and that religion appears to have survived the loss of those exterior allurements which might be supposed to have rendered it peculiarly attractive to the Parisians. The churches at present, far from being splendid, are not even decent, the walls and windows still bear traces of the Goths (or, if you will, the philosophers,) and in some places service is celebrated amidst piles of farage, sacks, casks, or lumber appertaining to the government--who, though they have by their own confession the disposal of half the metropolis, choose the churches in preference for such purposes.*

* It has frequently been a.s.serted in the Convention, that by emigrations, banishments, and executions, half Paris had become the property of the public.

--Yet these unseemly and desolate appearances do not prevent the attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent, than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations of pictures and tapestry.

This it is not difficult to account for. Many who used to perform these religious duties with negligence, or indifference, are now become pious, and even enthusiastic--and this not from hypocrisy or political contradiction, but from a real sense of the evils of irreligion, produced by the examples and conduct of those in whom such a tendency has been most remarkable.--It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that did Christianity require an advocate, a more powerful one need not be found, than in a retrospect of the crimes and sufferings of the French since its abolition.

Those who have made fortunes by the revolution (for very few have been able to preserve them) now begin to exhibit equipages; and they hope to render the people blind to this departure from their visionary systems of equality, by foregoing the use of arms and liveries--as if the real difference between the rich and the poor was not const.i.tuted rather by essential accommodation, than extrinsic embellishments, which perhaps do not gratify the eyes of the possessor a second time, and are, probably of all branches of luxury, the most useful. The livery of servants can be of very little importance, whether morally or politically considered--it is the act of maintaining men in idleness, who might be more profitably employed, that makes the keeping a great number exceptionable; nor is a man more degraded by going behind a carriage with a hat and feather, than with a bonnet de police, or a plain beaver; but he eats just as much, and earns just as little, equipped as a Carmagnole, as though glittering in the most superb gala suit.*

* In their zeal to imitate the Roman republicans, the French seem to forget that a political consideration very different from the love of simplicity, or an idea of the dignity of man, made the Romans averse from distinguishing their slaves by any external indication.

They were so numerous that it was thought impolitic to furnish them with such means of knowing their own strength in case of a revolt.

The marks of service cannot be more degrading than service itself; and it is the mere chicane of philosophy to extend reform only to cuffs and collars, while we do not dispense with the services annexed to them. A valet who walks the street in his powdering jacket, disdains a livery as much as the fiercest republican, and with as much reason--for there is no more difference between domestic occupation performed in one coat or another, than there is between the party-coloured habit and the jacket.

If the luxury of carriages be an evil, it must be because the horses employed in them consume the produce of land which might be more beneficially cultivated: but the gilding, fringe, salamanders, and lions, in all their heraldic positions, afford an easy livelihood to manufacturers and artisans, who might not be capable of more laborious occupations.

I believe it will generally be found, that most of the republican reforms are of this description--calculated only to impose on the people, and disguising, by frivolous prohibitions, their real inutility. The affectation of simplicity in a nation already familiarized with luxury, only tends to divert the wealth of the rich to purposes which render it more destructive. Vanity and ostentation, when they are excluded from one means of gratification, will always seek another; and those who, having the means, cannot distinguish themselves by ostensible splendour, will often do so by domestic profusion.*

* "Sectaries (says Walpole in his Anecdotes of Painting, speaking of the republicans under Cromwell) have no ostensible enjoyments; their pleasures are private, comfortable and gross. The arts of civilized society are not calculated for men who mean to rise on the ruins of established order." Judging by comparison, I am persuaded these observations are yet more applicable to the political, than the religious opinions of the English republicans of that period; for, in these respects, there is no difference between them and the French of the present day, though there is a wide one between an Anabaptist and the disciples of Boulanger and Voltaire.

--Nor can it well be disputed, that a gross luxury is more pernicious than an elegant one; for the former consumes the necessaries of life wantonly, while the latter maintains numerous hands in rendering things valuable by the workmanship which are little so in themselves.

Every one who has been a reflecting spectator of the revolution will acknowledge the justice of these observations. The agents and retainers of government are the general monopolizers of the markets, and these men, who are enriched by peculation, and are on all occasions retailing the cant phrases of the Convention, on the _purete des moeurs republicains, et la luxe de la ci-devant n.o.blesse,_ [The purity of republican manners, and the luxury of the ci-devant n.o.blesse.] exhibit scandalous exceptions to the national habits of oeconomy, at a time too when others more deserving are often compelled to sacrifice even their essential accommodations to a more rigid compliance with them.*

* Lindet, in a report on the situation of the republic, declares, that since the revolution the consumption of wines and every article of luxury has been such, that very little has been left for exportation. I have selected the following specimens of republican manners, from many others equally authentic, as they may be of some utility to those who would wish to estimate what the French have gained in this respect by a change of government.