Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/153

Rh a little humorous pleasantry interrupted the more tender outpourings in her letters. On the 26th of October, Imlay having now been absent for over a month, she writes:—

Many of her old friends in the capital had been numbered among the children devoured by the insatiable monster. A few, however, were still left, and she seems to have made new ones and to have again gone into Parisian society. The condition of affairs was more conducive to social pleasures than it had been the year before. Robespierre was dead. There were others besides Mary who feared "the last flap of the tail of the beast"; but, as a rule, the people, now the reaction had come, were over-confident, and the season was one of merry-making. There were fêtes and balls. Even mourning for the dead became the signal for rejoicing; and gay Parisians, their arms tied with crape, danced to the memory of the victims of the late national delirium. The Reign of Terror was over, but so was Mary's happiness. Public order was partly restored, but her own short-lived peace was rudely interrupted. Imlay in London became more absorbed in his immediate affairs, a fact which he could not conceal in his letters; and Mary realised that, compared to business, she was of little or no importance