3 I o Travels in France 



to-morrow; a mode of proceeding that makes it the more diffi- 

 cult to bring them to the point their leaders see necessary. 

 Eight thousand men in Paris may be called the standing army, 

 paid every day 15 sous a man; in which number is included the 

 corps of the French guards from Versailles that deserted to the 

 people: they have also eight hundred horse, at an expense each 

 of 1500 livres (£62 15s. 6d.) a year, and the officers have double 

 the pay of those in the army. 



^th. Yesterday's address of the National Assembly to the 

 king has done them credit with everybody. I have heard it 

 mentioned by people of very different opinions, but all concur 

 in commending it. It was upon the question of naming the 

 annual sum which should be granted for the civil list. They 

 determined to send a deputation to his majesty, requesting him 

 to name the sum himself, and praying him to consult less his 

 spirit of economy than a sense of that dignity which ought to 

 environ the throne with a becoming splendour. Dine with the 

 Duke de Liancourt at his apartments in the Tuileries which, 

 on the removal from Versailles, were assigned to him as grand 

 master of the wardrobe; he gives a great dinner twice a week 

 to the deputies, at which from twenty to forty are usually 

 present. Half an hour after three was the hour appointed, but 

 we waited with some of the deputies that had left the Assembly 

 till seven before the duke and the rest of the company came. 



There is in the Assembly at present a writer of character, the 

 author of a very able book, which led me to expect something 

 much above mediocrity in him; but he is made up of so many 

 pretty littlenesses that I stared at him with amazement. His 

 voice is that of a feminine whisper, as if his nerves would not 

 permit such a boisterous exertion as that of speaking loud 

 enough to be heard; when he breathes out his ideas he does it 

 with eyes half closed; waves his head in circles as if his senti- 

 ments were to be received as oracles ; and has so much relaxation 

 and pretension to ease and delicacy of manner, with no personal 

 appearance to second these prettinesses, that I wondered by 

 what artificial means such a mass of heterogeneous parts became 

 compounded. How strange that we should read an author's 

 book with great pleasure; that we should say, this man has no 

 stuff in him; all is of consequence; here is a character uncon- 

 taminated with that rubbish which we see in so many other men 

 — and after this, to meet the garb of so much littleness. 



6th, ']th, and 8/^. The Duke of Liancourt having an intention 

 of taking a farm into his own hands, to be conducted on im- 



