Paris 123 



French airs that I would almost as soon have rode the journey 

 blindfold on an ass. This is what the French call good spirits ; 

 no truly cheerful emotion in their bosoms ; silent or singing; but 

 for conversation they had none. I lose all patience in such com- 

 pany. Heaven send me a blind mare rather than another 

 diligence ! We were all this night, as well as all the day, on the 

 road, and reached Paris at nine in the morning. — 102 miles. 



8/A. To my friend Lazowski, to know where were the lodgings 

 I had written him to hire me, but my good Duchess d'Estissac 

 would not allow him to execute my commission. I found an 

 apartment in her hotel prepared for me. Paris is at present in 

 such a ferment about the states-general, now holding at Ver- 

 sailles, that conversation is absolutely absorbed by them. Not 

 a word of anything else talked of. Everything is considered, 

 and justly so, as important in such a crisis of the fate of four- 

 and-twenty millions of people. It is now a serious contention 

 whether the representatives are to be called the Commons or the 

 Tiers Etat ; they call themselves steadily the former, while the 

 court and the great lords reject the term with a species of appre- 

 hension, as if it involved a meaning not easily to be fathomed. 

 But this point is of little consequence, compared with another, 

 that has kept the states for some time in inactivity, the verifica- 

 tion of their power separately or in common. The nobility and 

 the clergy demand the former, but the Commons steadily refuse 

 it; the reason why a circumstance, apparently of no great con- 

 sequence, is thus tenaciously regarded is that it may decide their 

 sitting for the future in separate houses or in one. Those who 

 are warm for the interest of the people declare that it will be 

 impossible to reform some of the grossest abuses in the state if 

 the nobility, by sitting in a separate chamber, shall have a 

 negative on the wishes of the people : and that to give such a veto 

 to the clergy would be still more preposterous ; if therefore, by 

 the verification of their powers in one chamber, they shall once 

 come together, the popular party hope that there will remain 

 no power afterwards to separate. The nobility and clerg}' 

 foresee the same result, and will not therefore agree to it. In 

 this dilemma it is curious to remark the feelings of the moment. 

 It is not my business to \\Tite memoirs of what passes, but I am 

 intent to catch, as well as I can, the opinions of the day most 

 prevalent. WTiile I remain at Paris, I shall see people of all 

 descriptions, from the coffee-house politicians to the leaders in 

 the states; and the chief object of such rapid notes as I throw 

 on paper will be to catch the ideas of the moment; to compare 



