A Residence In France During The Years 1792 1793 1794 And 1795 Part Iv 1795

aI am every day more confirmed in the opinion I communicated to you on my arrival, that the first ardour of the revolution is abated. -The bridal days are indeed past, and I think I perceive something like indifference approaching. Perhaps the French themselves are not sensible of this change; but I who have been absent two years, and have made as it were a sudden transition from enthusiasm to coldness, without passing through the intermediate gradations, am forcibly struck with it. When I was here in 1790, parties could be scarcely said to exist-the popular triumph was too complete and too recent for intolerance and persecution, and the Noblesse and Clergy either submitted in silence, or appeared to rejoice in their own defeat. In fact, it was the confusion of a decisive conquest-the victors and the vanquished were mingled together; and the one had not leisure to exercise cruelty, nor the other to meditate revenge. a