time and thrown into it again. In less than two hours I felt quite a different person. I dined with some friend by the indulgence of my conductor, and ate with a very good appetite, which had quite failed me latterly. Awful as that abode was, you would scarcely believe, perhaps, that I have not been so cheerful since as I was there, nor have I since seen so many cheerful people. One would think that nature had formed one's nerves according to the different situations that they may be exposed to. On se fait à tout, and one may accustom oneself to bad fortune as one does to good.
We used frequently to breakfast and dine at each other's room, which time generally passed in mirth. Most of us thought we had but a short time allotted to us, and that it was better to enjoy that little as much as we could. I do not recollect, among the hundreds that I both saw and spoke to after their condemnation, that one single one of them, except Madame du Barri, showed any softness upon the occasion; and several seemed as cheerful as if nothing had happened to them.
After I had remained a few months at my new abode, where we were comfortable enough, things took another turn, and without beat of drum we were all conveyed in a hurry to another prison,[1] where we had not been long before we were visited by a part of the Municipality of Paris, attended by a numerous guard, and all ordered to our rooms, with sentinels placed at our doors to prevent our going out. Each of us was visited by a municipal and his attendants, who as soon as they came into the room told us with a threat to deliver all our money, knives, forks, scissors, &c., &c., and that whoever hid the least matter demanded should immediately be sent to the Conciergerie. I was in a very small room and alone, and yet they passed above an hour with me, to the amazement
- ↑ Prison Coignard, May 3, 1794.
