The French Government, However, Has Not Ventured To Act Any Further Upon It, Than To Make A Pompous Display Of The Royalist Zeal And Bon Esprit That Pervades The Department Of The Doubs.

I see a good deal of Mlle Michaud.

I find her conversation extremely agreeable. She had lent to me an Italian work by Verri entitled Le notti Romane al sepolcro di Stipione. She is a very rigid Catholic, having been educated by a priest of very strict ideas. Her devotion however does not render her less cheerful or less amiable. She having expressed a wish to hear the Protestant church service, I offered to accompany her and we went together one Sunday to the Cathedral Church at Lausanne. But it unfortunately happened that on that day a sermon was preached which must have given a great deal of pain to her filial feelings. Mr Levade, the minister, took it into his head to give a political sermon, in which, after a great deal of commonplace abuse of Voltaire, Rousseau and the French Revolution, and very fulsome adulation towards the English government (a subject which was brought in by the head and shoulders), of that island (as he termed it) surrounded by the Ocean, he lavished a great deal of still more fulsome adulation on the Bourbons; and then most wantonly and unnecessarily began a furious declamation against the regicides as he termed them, who had taken refuge in the Canton, and intimated pretty plainly how pleasing it would be to God Almighty that they should be expelled from it. This intolerant discourse, more worthy of a raving Jesuit than of a Protestant minister, was deservedly scouted by the inhabitants of Lausanne; but this did not hinder poor Mlle Michaud from being much affected at the opprobrious tirade directed against a set of men, among whom her father bore a conspicuous part, and who acted from patriotic motives. I must not omit to state that in this discourse M. Levade interwove some hyperbolical compliments towards the young Prince of Sweden, who attended the service that morning. He told him that the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon him, and that Providence had him under his especial care.

Now the following is the character of M. Levade.[72] He is a time-serving, meddling priest, and a most flagrant adulator of the powers that be. He thinks that by declaiming against the French Revolution, and against Voltaire and Rousseau, that he will get into favor with the great people who pass thro' Lausanne, with the French and English Government adherents, and with the great Tory families of England. No considerable personage ever passes through Lausanne, but Mr Levade is the first to make him a visit; and no rich or noble English family arrives with whom he does not ingratiate himself, and he is not sparing of his adulations. This mode of procedure has been a very profitable concern to him, as he has received a vast number of presents, and several valuable legacies, besides securing a number of pupils among the English families, that come or that have been here.

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