"Si
Quelqu'un Parle Contre La Foi Chretienne Dans Votre Presence, Donnez Lui
L'epee Ventre-Dedans."
December 18th.
I met with an emigrant this day at the Palais Royal who was acquainted with
my family in London. It was the Vicomte de B*****ye.[58] He had resided
some time in England and also in Switzerland. He is an amiable man, but a
most incorrigible Ultra. He displayed at once the ideas that prevail among
the Ultras, which must render them eternally at variance with the mass of
the French nation. In speaking of the state of France, he said: "Je n'ai
jamais cesse et jamais je ne cesserai de regarder comme voleurs tous les
acquereurs des biens des emigres. Il faudroit, pour le bonheur de la
France, qu'elle fut places dans le meme etat ou elle etait avant la
Revolution." He would not listen to my reasons against the possibility of
effecting such a plan, even were the plan just and reasonable in itself. I
told him that for the emigrants to expect to get back their property was
just as absurd as for the descendants of those Saxon families in England,
whose ancestors were dispossessed of their estates by William the
Conqueror, to think of regaining them, and to call upon the Duke of
Northumberland, for instance, as a descendant of a Norman invader, to give
up his property as unjustly acquired by his progenitors. We did not hold
long converse after this; his ideas and mine diverged too much from each
other.
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