On
our arrival, we were informed, as usual, that the house was already full,
and that there was no possibility of admitting us. We however, set up
all night in the keeper's room with some other people newly arrived like
ourselves, and in the morning, after a little disputing and a pretty
general derangement of the more ancient inhabitants, we were "nichees,"
as I have described to you.
We have not yet quitted our room much, but I observe that every one
appears more chearful, and more studied in their toilette, than at the
Bicetre, and I am willing to infer from thence that confinement here is
less insupportable.--I have been employed two days in enlarging the notes
I had made in our last prison, and in making them more legible, for I
ventured no farther than just to scribble with a pencil in a kind of
short-hand of my own invention, and not even that without a variety of
precautions. I shall be here less liable either to surprize or
observation, and as soon as I have secured what I have already noted,
(which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual
form. You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want
of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as
a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands of French
republicans.
It will not be improper to notice to you a very ingenious decree of
Gaston, (a member of the Convention,) who lately proposed to embark all
the English now in France at Brest, and then to sink the ships.
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