Poor La Fayette, it overdoes his errors. I believe he was compelled to go beyond his wishes, for as Dr. Johnson somewhere says, ‘However faction finds a man, it seldom leaves him honest.’ Dumouriez[79] went to England; immediately upon his arrival he informed Ld. Grenville, and begged to know whether he might be permitted to remain. Ld. G. told him he applied to the wrong person, as Mr. Dundas was the proper one to address, but he would venture to assure him permission would _not_ be granted, and implied the sooner he went the better. I was extremely irritated to find a few miles from Lausanne that Mr. Douglas had followed me. I knew that a timely check might rid me of his company for the journey. I therefore stopped the carriage, spoke to him with cold civility, and gave him a message to Ly. C., as I would not allow him to suppose I could imagine that he meant to join me in travelling. He looked embarrassed, took the rebuff, and returned back. The Convention have satisfied themselves with ye guillotine for Charlotte Corday. She behaved with the utmost intrepidity to the last sad scene. Women have appeared at the Bar of the Convention begging their infants might take the name of Marat, adding that they renounced any other _évangile_ than his works, all creeds but the Constitution! Great reports of the success of the Royalist army; it is said to be within sixteen leagues of Paris, but I confess, for one, that I am incredulous, as the stories about it vary so much. Nantes was in counter-revolution for thirty-six hours; Lyons is hostile to the Convention, but the inhabitants are arrant Republicans. I believe General Ferraris will defeat my wish of seeing the siege of Valenciennes, as he will take it before I get thither. [Sidenote: STATE OF FRANCE] Slept at Avenches. There is a curious mosaic pavement, a vestige of it belonging to the Romans. Ld. Northampton[80] has lived here for fifteen years. The old town stood a mile further eastward. Some inscriptions besides the tesselated pavement still remain, but the corroding effect of time, and the still more destructive hand of man, have left little to prove its former splendour. _24th July._--Set off at half-past seven o’clock. Just before we entered the town of Morat we passed the chapel which contains the bones of the Burgundians who fell on this spot in 1476; which finally closed the long contests between the Swiss and the Duke of Burgundy. The awful sight of these remains at once raises melancholy and pleasing thoughts, for here were doomed to fall by the folly of a tyrant several thousands of our species, and here also the courage arising from a true spirit of liberty secured the independence of this country.