Accordingly I engaged a very good chariot at six guineas a week for my stay in Paris, and after paying my respect to our Minister, Mr. Jackson (the British Embassy is lodged in the Faubourg S. Germain), I hastened to the office of the notorious Fouché,[1] the Minister of Police, on the Quai Voltaire, opposite the Louvre, where I was admitted into an ante-chamber, crowded with ninety persons; their number I knew because on entering I received a billet marked 91 from a soldier. I had to wait two hours and a half for my audience. During this long period I was able to make the following observations. I was never more surprised than at the want of courtesy shown to females in a country which has always boasted more of its gallantry than its virtue. Several well-dressed ladies received their billets long after mine, but when I offered them the precedence, the brute who attends the entrance pushed them back with disgusting insolence and violence. I remarked that I cheerfully resigned my right to the ladies; he replied with a savage sneer, “If you don’t choose to take your turn, pass to the bottom.” In this ante-chamber stood a motley group whose countenances evidently bespoke the sentiments of their hearts. The returned emigrants might easily be distinguished, supple and servile, and never suffering the lowest commissary of police, who wore a little gold or silver tinsel about his coat, to pass without offering him a profound reverence. And they were right, for the ancient aristocracy were lofty and self-conceited, but affable and courteous withal. The modern aristocracy of France, that is those men who have been transplanted from the dunghill to the exercise of public functions, are, in general, brutal in their manners to inferiors, cringing to their superiors and insolent to unofficial persons, they also show strong traits of a ferocity of character. An unanswerable proof of this degeneracy may be found in the degraded condition of the fair sex, who are no longer treated with that decorous respect which heretofore characterised the French people. This is a nation of soldiers, not cavaliers--not a solitary blade would leap out of its scabbard to resent an insult to the finest woman in the Republic. The sword here is now used, not for the defence of the feeble, but as an instrument to acquire wealth and power. The Republican soldier is fully as brave as was the soldier of the Royal army, but he is destitute of the honour and urbanity which distinguished the latter. An army of soldiers, organised for conquest, propelled by avarice, and inured to victory, resemble more the hordes of an Attila or Ghengiz Khan, than the forces of a polished Empire. The Republican troops are now masters of the State, their defeats obliterated, and their victories confirmed by triumphing over the liberties of their fellow citizens.