18.
I begin to be very uneasy about Mr. and Mrs. D____. I have written
several times, and still receive no answer. I fear they are in a
confinement more severe than my own, or that our letters miscarry. A
servant of Mad. de ____'s was here this morning, and no letters had come
to Peronne, unless, as my friend endeavours to persuade me, the man would
not venture to give them in presence of the guard, who par excellence
happened to be a furious Jacobin.--We had the mortification of hearing
that a very elegant carriage of Mad. de ____'s has been put in
requisition, and taken to convey a tinman and two farriers who were going
to Paris on a mission--that two of her farmer's best horses had been
killed by hard work in taking provisions to the army, and that they are
now cutting down the young wood on her estate to make pikes.--The seals
are still on our effects, and the guard remains in possession, which has
put us to the expence of buying a variety of articles we could not well
dispense with: for, on examining the baggage after our arrival, we found
it very much diminshed; and this has happened to almost all the people
who have been arrested. Our suspicions naturally fall on the dragoons,
and it is not very surprizing that they should attempt to steal from
those whom they are certain would not dare to make any complaint.
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