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Letter of Benjamin Vaughan from Paris to Lord Lansdowne describing the Fête de la Fédération.
Paris, July 15, 1790.
The ceremony of yesterday is over without any accident as yet known to me. It was curious as presenting a great many novel facts, but not so impressive as might have been expected, and the treatment of strangers at this moment is one of the many proofs of the hurry of it. There were two large portions of the covered seats very principally destined for them, but of which they knew nothing. By a mere accident I was placed through the ambassador, and nearly the single stranger (except the corps diplomatique) in one of the divisions; in the other there were scarcely more. I know two colonels and a young lady who were in the public seats, whence they had endeavoured foolishly to exclude umbrellas, notwithstanding it was a day of constant showers, which wet everybody without (and almost within) to the skin. The ceremony was twice as long as necessary, and conducted so as to give me the impression of M. de la F. not having comprehensive talents. The neglect of strangers at the ceremony, and their present exclusion from the assembly, where I have been only by stealth, and am to return only as a news writer in a box holding eight people, I say these circumstances show politeness not to be a predominant character of this young man, of whom as yet I have seen nothing.
Nor have I seen M. de Mirabeau, though I have dined at his house with the Marseilles deputies. But to-morrow I hope, in company with Lord Wycombe, to be present at his fête civique, for which purpose he is building a temporary apartment. He is getting blind with one eye, and in that case the other is never secure. At the present moment he is in pet with the assembly, otherwise I doubt not his having taken the part of strangers.
The King did not walk to the altar to take his oath, which would have been very popular, and which no rain should have set
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