Miss Helen Maria Williams[1] lives at the hotel of Alexander Berthier, Minister of War. Helen is a personage, and at the Ministry of War she holds her court.

The notorious Mr. Stone,[1] who has driven away from his side and cruelly ill-used his wife, lives with Helen, in a virtuous philosophical platonic friendship. It is singular so spiritual a damsel should harbour and entertain a man of whom no one, not even in Paris, speaks a good word. It is difficult to describe his services; his functions being so variously compounded of the German squire, the Italian cicisbeo, the English master of the ceremonies, and the French peroquet (as those fellows are termed whom the French Republican ladies keep to puff them, their beauty, toilets and talents in the Journals).

He also acts as her “garde des archives” and her chamberlain. He is in short a man of all work!

These things give no offence in this easy capital, where it is a common thing for a man to sit down at table with his wife and children and his mistress, and vice versâ. I have been present at many of these happy meetings, or, as they are called here, mélanges morales.

A Parisian man of fashion told me the other day in the presence of his wife, a very handsome woman, that after the first child, he thought both parties were at liberty to do as they pleased. This would have been a good plea before an English jury for the mitigation of damages. In Paris they are more enlightened than in London, and you never hear of a single action for “crim. con.” from beginning to the end of the year in the French capital.

I have assisted at a dinner given by Madame Tallien,[1] who has long been separated from her husband, and now lives with a rich merchant, who I mentioned in a former letter as the present proprietor of the late Duke of Orleans’ château of Rincy. There were sixteen persons at table, exclusive of Madame and her “cher ami,” and one of the sixteen was Tallien himself. He sat by the side of his ci-devant spouse, and was engaged during most of the banquet in an animated and almost affectionate conversation with her.

A fashionable French philosopher has lately announced, after the most recondite meditation, that he has discovered “marriage to be the most odious of all monopolies.” This important discovery has, so far, made no progress in England; but in this city, the favourite abode of true philosophy, it is taught in every stoa poecile. If I could borrow the pencil of Gilray, I might hope to delineate this nuptial banquet in its proper colours—a banquet at which Venus Suadala was present, accompanied by all the Loves and Graces in playful dalliance.

When Tallien was in Egypt, his patriotic wife, feeling for the grievous losses which the Republic had sustained in the number of its sons cut off by the sword, pestilence and famine, with a generous and disinterested ardour contributed her material labours towards making up the deficiency in the population. Two little Republicans, presented to the State during her husband’s absence, attest her zeal, and it is pleasant to add she was by no means singular in this sublime and Spartan devotion.

On the return of the illustrious Commissioner, he followed (for it is by no means etiquette for a husband and wife to go together) his lovely spouse to a ball.

When he arrived, he found her in a state so resembling a state of nature (she had but one apology for a garment, and that was of the thinnest muslin), that he was indignant. He reproached her for her indecent attire, and received the reply that he was free to get another wife to dress more to his mind. She told him coolly that she had never loved him, and only married him to save her life. But that as she was no longer in terror of the guillotine, he was welcome to her fortune, but should have nothing more to do with her person. “You know,” she added, “what I can tell if I choose.”

The ladies of Paris, from Madame Bonaparte downwards, highly approve of the spirited conduct of Madame Tallien, whom they consider a persecuted beauty as well as a charming woman.

The fact is that when she was Marquise de Fontenay, and in prison at Bordeaux, Tallien, then on a mission to that city, which he was reorganising in torrents of blood, proposed to save her head if she would surrender to him her purse and person, but threatened her with death should she reject his offer. She gave her hand, therefore, to this renowned Sans Culotte—a circumstance which engendered an irreconcilable hatred between him and Robespierre, which exploded on the 9th of Thermidor in favour of the former.

Some of Tallien’s exploits during the Revolution are worthy of record. In the days of September 1792, he knocked out with his own hands the brains of one old priest eighty years old, and bludgeoned six others. At Bordeaux only eighteen persons were executed on his own personal recommendation, but he brought away with him from that city 1,700,000 livres (£64,000 sterling) in solid cash—money paid to him as bribes for generously restoring to liberty “good citizens he discovered to have been falsely accused.”

But to return from this digression to Helen Williams. This priestess of the Revolution has a nightly synod at her apartments, to which the political dramatists and literati of the capital resort. Here she is in her glory. Perched like the bird of wisdom on her shrine, she snuffs up the mounting incense of adulation offered up by homicides and plunderers of the public. At the instant of inspiration she becomes convulsed like the Delphic Priestess. By an ingenious device she contracts her lips into the form of a pipe, and literally whistles out the words of the oracle she pronounces. The keeper of the archives is at hand to record what passes for the benefit of the booksellers. The instant each ruling party is overthrown, out come two or four little duodecimos, which this fanatical female calls “Anecdotes of the Founders of the French Revolution,” &c., in which she records all their sayings, and abuses in turn those whom she before received with smiles at her conversaziones. If you wish to become acquainted with a devil in the shape of a philosopher, a general, a legislator, a quiz or a thief, you will find any of these characters at Helen’s coteries.

I mention Madame de Beccaria in this place by way of a contrast. She is the daughter of the celebrated Marquis de Beccaria, author of the book on Crimes and Punishments. Elegant in her manners, she is possessed of a pleasing person, and is modest, affable, and good-natured. Though a rigid Catholic, she does not pose as a saint, nor does she keep a coterie, or wish to take advantage of her father’s celebrity to collect around her the fops of philosophy. She had a great disappointment in her marriage. Her husband was an Italian nobleman, whose union with her has been annulled on account of his insanity.

Madame de Beccaria[1] will go to England very shortly for the purpose of having her father’s writings translated there. She made me a present of her father’s portrait, assuring me that he never wrote an Italian work entitled Saggio sopra la Politica e la Legislatione Romana.

Kosciusko has disappointed my expectations; perhaps I judge of him too rashly, but if in two hours’ conversation with any man upon subjects most interesting, not a spark of extraordinary light is emitted, I think it is but fair to conclude that such a man is not fit to move out of the common circle. According to my way of thinking, the negro General Toussaint is immeasurably his intellectual superior. But his valour and sufferings will always excite sympathy, and the cause in which he strove the interest of mankind.