deur might have inspired, nor the fear, which the danger of the moment might have excited.

"Barrère, who as president interrogated him, began with a tremulous voice. Silence prevailed in the galleries, and had chained all tongues. D'Orleans, secreted in a corner, on the side of the mountain, and standing behind Danton, looked incessantly at the accused, who answered every question with much presence of mind and coolness.

"Whether the king feared, that my letter might conceal a snare, whether he wanted facility to express himself, or whether his easy disposition overruled the dangers which threatened him, instead of challenging the competency of the assembly, he acknowledged their pretended right, not only by answering every question addressed to him, but by acknowledging the various vouchers, produced by secretary Valazé. Oh Louis! you have become the accomplice of your murderers, and, if there is any dependence on the calculations of probability, you have prepared the footsteps of your scaffold!

"No memorable event signalized that day. I observed a severe attitude in the members; the people manifested a great uniformity of sentiment, very different from the fierce orators, whose gall flows daily from the rostrum. Insane men! they fancy themselves great men, because they tread under foot humbled greatness! I fancy I behold gladiators, as vile as ferocious, priding themselves for the wounds inflicted on a dead carcase.

"Freedman, my faithful servant, witnessed a scene, I believe, fit to give an idea of the public opinion. At the moment, when the coach of the unfortunate monarch turned the corner of Vendome square, a villain, hired for the purpose, exclaimed, To the guillotine!.....This bloody cry, heard at that silent moment, excited universal horror and indignation. Coward,

said á mechanic to the villain, wait until the law has pronounced whether he deserves it, and learn to respect misfortune.”

Dec. 14th. an hour before I went to the Temple.

I have often reflected with philosophers on the insignificance of sublunary enjoyments; fed with the

writings of the sublime Young, I have thought, thatoir this heap of mud, called the earth, kings were but light straws loosened from the sheaf, which composes mankind, and which shine, because the sun gives them a brighter tint; I have studied historians, and especially for three months past, I have reviewed all those, who treat of the revolutions of empires; and, reckoning from the sanguinary laws of Draco, the refined tortures invented by Phalaris, the anarchy of the thirty tyrants of Athens, down to the tyranny of Louis XI. of devout and bloody memory, I have examined the gallery of despots, ambitious and factious men, of demagogues and kings, who have borne down man kind; I must have accustomed myself to contemplate the revolutions of the globe, sometimes a prey to deceivers, and sometimes to the wicked. Here I have observed nations without control impelled to crimes by their passions, to slavery by their licentiousness; there usurpers without humanity, penning up, like vile cattle, the children of nature, enumerating their devoted heads, and sacrificing them to satiate their cruelty, or to solace their weariness; finally, I have

observed all the movements of the miserable race of men, and they are not less known to me, than the most celebrated conflagrations, the irruptions of volcanoes, the most dreadful earthquakes, and the most remarkable shipwrecks. My heart ought to be hardened, my eye should behold without a tear calamities so dire and so common. Yet, oh pusillanimity! I feel a drop of sympathy, my heart is rent, when I behold the original of these sad pictures, of which I have hitherto known a copy only! He is detained in a tower, he, whom I have seen as a sovereign in a palace! Sad jailers have succeeded his brilliant guards! With a nod, he could arm millions of sinews, cover the seas with fleets, pour streams of riches into his coffers, distribute liberally life, or scatter death widely; a savoyard on the new bridge enjoys more liberty! Among those, who command him, some were born his meanest subjects, they reign now! Fortune, with one turn of her wheel, levelled the monarch in the dust, and raised the peasant on the throne. The tatters of misery protect the limbs once covered with purple ;

and the astonished purpureal robes deck the mean dem

agogue, who stole the royal mantle! What a dream!..... Yet, whilst tyranny, intoxicated with delight, slumbers in blood, the people watch to suffer. They have been promised liberty, but they are only permitted to enjoy pillage! They are told, here is bread; they look and behold mangled carcases!.....Ought one to detest the cause of those shameful results? Is the revolution one of those storms dealing the thunderbolt, which destroys, and the dew, which fertilizes? Wo to the stupendous mountains! Wo to the superb edifices! Wo to the lofty oak, when the thunder roars!.....Oh! age of reason and folly, of wisdom and error, of heroic virtues and of unheard of crimes! Happy he, who may feed on the fruits promised by the volcanic irruption of our torn up soil! Happy above all since enjoying benefits, he shall not have witnessed, he shall not have felt, the horrors of their origin !.....But away with those shocking reflections, let us only think how we shall justify the confidence shewn us by Louis.....I beheld him again; to reach his prison, I passed nine iron gates, three wickets, and a guard house filled with drunken soldiers smoke