If the stories which are told of the extravagancies which this place gave birth to did not come from those who witnessed them (both French and English) their possibility might be doubted. I shall trouble you with only one of them.----A young republican of this town, on being ordered as a soldier to the frontiers, took a young woman of the place, and swore her here to be true to him; but even this test of the reality of her intention not being sufficient to quiet his jealous scruples, he absolutely wrote a letter to the convention, which was laid before them, stating his situation, and intreating that the girl might be put in a state of _requisition_, in her maiden capacity, until his return; lest, in his absence, she might be exposed to the allurements and seductions of aristocrates, who went about seeking to injure good republicans and _sans-culottes_ like him. Can it be believed that a national congress should afford a serious hearing to such nonsense? Yet so it was; and she was actually commanded to remain single until the young man should return.----Not a very gallant compliment to the lady’s constancy of temper, you will say! To do justice to the French, I must however observe, that all ranks and parties of them now deride the remembrance of these degrading follies. There are two coffee-houses in the town, which are numerously resorted to by both the English and the French, notwithstanding an inscription placed over the door of one of them, forbidding any but good patriots to enter. The sign of this coffee-house gave rise lately to a refined piece of affectation:----it was a lion devouring a human body, and so exquisitely susceptible are the feelings of the present reigning party become, that they ordered the man of the house to blot out the body, “_it so reminded them of the days of Robespierre_.” Accordingly the lion only now is seen. Here I go daily to read the Paris news-papers, and meet not with any interruption. For this privilege it is expected that something be spent: a dish of excellent coffee costs 15 sols, and a glass of _liqueur_ from 20 to 40 sols. Persons of all ranks and professions, officers, soldiers, and their wives, and the people of the town, mingle here promiscuously.