This picture of Paris in 1789 is the more impressive that it was not drawn by a Puritan or a Pharisee. Gouverneur Morris was eminently what is called a 'man of the world,' His diary abounds in proofs that, to use his own language, he was 'no enemy to the tender passion.' Indeed, while the elections for the States-General were going on, he appears to have been almost as much interested in finding out the fair author of an anonymous billet-doux as in unravelling the politics of the day. He was not so much scandalised by the immorality as appalled by the lawlessness of the French capital. He foresaw the failure of the Revolution from the outset. A week before the States-General met in April, 1789, he wrote to General Washington: 'One fatal principle pervades all ranks. It is a perfect indifference to the violation of all engagements.' He noted at the same time the fears of Necker lest it should be 'found impossible to trust the troops.' Of the Tiers-Etat, when it had carried into effect the grotesque and senseless dictum, of the Abbe Sieyes, that the Tiers-Etat, having thitherto been nothing in France, ought thenceforth to be everything, Morris expected only what came of it under its self-assumed title of a 'National Assembly.' 'It is impossible,' he wrote to Robert Morris in America, 'to imagine a more disorderly body. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, _and they will be obliged to take back their chains_.' All this was long before 'the Terror,' I repeat. It was long before 'the Terror' that the hotel of the Duc de Castries was stormed and pillaged in Paris by a mob because the son of the Duc, having been grossly insulted by a popular favourite, De Lameth, had called Lameth out, allowed Lameth's seconds to choose swords as the weapons, and then wounded Lameth. This monstrous performance the Assembly sanctioned. 'I think,' wrote Morris very quietly, 'it will lead to consequences not now dreamt of.' In this same year, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' Morris, noting in his diary a conversation with General Dalrymple, a kinsman of the rather celebrated Madame Elliot, observes, 'he tells me of certain horrors committed in Arras, but to these things we are familiarised.' It was this essentially criminal and anarchical character of the Revolution of 1789 which brought on 'the Terror,' not 'the Terror' which engendered the crime and the anarchy.