A French writer, _Mr. du Laure_, in a Description of Paris, just published, says, "About thirty thousand persons were killed on that night in Paris and in the country; few of the citizens but were either assassins or assassinated. Ambition, the hatred of the great, of a woman, the feebleness and cruelty of a king, the spirit of party, the fanaticism of the people, animated those scenes of horror, which do not depose so much against the French nation, at that time governed by strangers, as against the passions of the great, and the ill-directed zeal of the religion of an ignorant populace." A few more modern instances of female fortitude are given in a note.[31] [Note 31: On the 28th of March, 1757, _Damiens_, who stabbed _Lewis_ XV. was executed in the _Place de Greve_, four horses were to pull his arms and legs from his body: they were fifty minutes pulling in vain, and at last his joints were obliged to be cut: he supported these torments patiently, and expired whilst the tendons of his shoulders were cutting, though he was living after his legs and thighs had been torn from his body; his right hand had previously been cut off. I was in Paris in 1768, and then, and at various times since have been assured by eye-witnesses, that almost all the windows of the square where the execution was performed were hired by ladies, at from two to ten _louis_ each. Mr. Thicknesse in his "_Year's journey through France and Part of Spain_," in a letter dated _Dijon_,_ in Burgundy_, 1776, mentions a man whom he saw broke alive on the wheel by, "the executioner and _his mother_, who assisted at this horrid business, these both seemed to enjoy the deadly office." I have formerly given an account of the Spanish ladies enjoying the barbarities of the bull-fights.] MISCELLANIES. NUMBER OF SLAIN. ON that same Saturday morning the dead Swiss, the broken furniture of the palace, and the burning woodwork of the barracks, were all gathered together in a vast heap, and set fire to. I saw this pile at twenty or thirty yards distance, and I was told that some of the women who were spectators took out an arm or a leg that was broiling, to taste: this I did _not see_, but I see no reason for _not believing it_. On the afternoon of this day, the coffee-houses were, as usual, filled with idle people, who amused themselves with playing at the baby-game of _domino_.