When his Citizen Excellency keeps the festival, which every
citizen is ordered to observe, for the glorious execution of Louis the
Sixteenth, and renews his oath of detestation of kings, a grand ball of
course will be given on the occasion. Then what a hurly-burly! what a
crowding! what a glare of a thousand flambeaux in the square! what a
clamor of footmen contending at the door! what a rattling of a thousand
coaches of duchesses, countesses, and Lady Marys, choking the way, and
overturning each other, in a struggle who should be first to pay her
court to the _Citoyenne_, the spouse of the twenty-first husband, he
the husband of the thirty-first wife, and to hail her in the rank of
honorable matrons before the four days' duration of marriage is
expired!--Morals, as they were, decorum, the great outguard of the sex,
and the proud sentiment of honor, which makes virtue more respectable,
where it is, and conceals human frailty, where virtue may not be, will
be banished from this land of propriety, modesty, and reserve.
We had before an ambassador from the most Christian King. We shall have
then one, perhaps two, as lately, from the most Anti-Christian Republic.
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