In the autumn of 1790, Pigott, as it appears from Madame Roland's letters to Bancal, was living alternately at Geneva and Lyons, and was desirous of buying a confiscated or private estate in the South of France. He was, however, as fickle as the wind, and Madame Roland predicted that unless he was taken by surprise and forced into a decision, he would be looking about all his life, and would build only in the air. At the beginning of 1792 he seems to have been back in Paris, and published a plea for caps, which I have been unable to find, but passages from which appeared in Brissot's paper, the Patriote Français. It urged that the cap allowed the face to be well seen, and could have various shapes and colours, whereas the hat was gloomy and morose. It denounced the uncovering of the head as a servile and ridiculous salutation, and appealed to Greek, Roman, and Gaulish usage, as also to Voltaire and Rousseau, in favour of caps. The effect of the appeal was electrical. For a few weeks caps were the rage, and Grangeneuve, a Girondin deputy, wore one in the Assembly, though it is not clear that they were used out of doors, any more than by Voltaire and Rousseau. When, on the 19th March 1792, Pétion wrote to the Jacobin Club so strong and sensible a remonstrance against external signs of republicanism that the president pocketed his cap, his assessors following suit, it cannot be supposed that they went home bare-headed. These caps must have been
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