of dragoons, who delivered the whole family into the custody of our
keeper; and this appears to have happened without any other motive than
his having presented a petition to Dumont in behalf of his father.

An old man was lately taken from his house in the night, and brought
here, because he was said to have worn the cross of St. Louis.--The fact
is, however, that he never did wear this obnoxious distinction; and
though his daughter has proved this incontrovertibly to Dumont, she
cannot obtain his liberty: and the poor young woman, after making two or
three fruitless journeys to Paris, is obliged to content herself with
seeing her father occasionally at the gate.

The refectory of the convent is inhabited by hospital nuns. Many of the
hospitals in France had a sort of religious order annexed to them, whose
business it was to attend the sick; and habit, perhaps too the
association of the offices of humanity with the duties of religion, had
made them so useful in their profession, that they were suffered to
remain, even after the abolition of the regular monasteries. But the
devastating torrent of the revolution at length reached them: they were
accused of bestowing a more tender solicitude on their aristocratic
patients than on the wounded volunteers and republicans; and, upon these
curious charges, they have been heaped into carts, without a single
necessary, almost without covering, sent from one department to another,
and distributed in different prisons, where they are perishing with cold,
sickness, and want! Some people are here only because they happened to
be accidentally at a house when the owner was arrested;* and we have one
family who were taken at dinner, with their guests, and the plate they
were using!

* It was not uncommon for a mandate of arrest to direct the taking