Such are among the few comforts
that result from a despotic government.
My republican spirit, however, boiled up a little last Monday, when I
had to petition Mons. de Calonne for the restoration of some trifles
detained in the custom-house at Calais. His politeness, indeed, and the
sight of others performing like acts of humiliation, reconciled me in
some measure to the drudgery of running from subaltern to subaltern,
intreating, in pathetic terms, the remission of a law which is at last
either just or unjust; if just, no felicitation should, methinks, be
permitted to change it; if unjust, what can be so grating as the
obligation to solicit?
We mean to quit Paris to-morrow; I therefore enquired this evening, what
was become of our aerial travellers. A very grave man replied, "_Je
crois, Madame, qu'ils sont deja arrives ces Messieurs la, au lieu ou
les vents se forment_[D]."
[Footnote D: I fancy, Ma'am, the gentlemen are gone to see the place
where all the winds blow from.]
LYONS.
Sept. 25, 1784.
We left the capital at our intended time, and put into the carriage, for
amusement, a book seriously recommended by Mr. Goldoni; but which
diverted me only by the fanfaronades that it contained.
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