n bread made of dog-grass."
Haggard and worn out, the peasant, with his pallid wife and children,
resorts to the marsh to dig roots, while there is scarcely enough
strength in his arms to hold the plough.--The same spectacle is visible
in places which produce but little grain, or where the granaries
have been emptied by the revolutionary drafts. "In many of the Indre
districts," writes the representative on missions,[4256] "food
is wanting absolutely. Even in some of the communes, many of the
inhabitants are reduced to a frightful state of want, feeding on acorns,
bran and other unhealthy food.... The districts of Chatre and Argenton,
especially, will be reduced to starvation unless they are promptly
relieved.... The cultivation of the ground is abandoned; most of the
persons in the jurisdiction wander about the neighboring departments
in search of food."--And it is doubtful whether they find it. In the
department of Cher, "the butchers can no longer slaughter; the dealers'
stores are all empty." In Allier, "the slaughterhouses and markets are
deserted, every species of vegetable and aliment having disappeared;
the inns are closed." In one of the Lozere districts, composed of five
cantons, of which one produces an extra quantity of rye, the people live
on requisitions imposed on Gard and the Upper Loire; the extortions of
the representatives in these two departments "were distributed among the
municipalities, and by these to the most indigent: many entire families,
many of the poor and even of the rich, suffered for want of bread during
six or eight days, and this frequently."[4257] Nevertheless they do not
riot; they merely supplicate and stretch forth their hands "with tears
in their eyes. "--Such is the diet and submission of the stomach in
the provinces. Paris is less patient. For this reason, all the rest is
sacrificed to it,[4258] not merely the public funds, the Treasury from
which it gets one or two millions per week,[4259] but whole districts
are starved for its benefit, six departments providing grain, twenty six
departments providing pork,[4260] at the rate of the maximum, through
requisitions, through the prospect of imprisonment and of the scaffold
in case of refusal or concealment, under the predatory bayonets of the
revolutionary army. The capital, above all, has to be fed. Let us see,
under this system of partiality, how people live in Paris and what they
feed on.

"Frightful crowds" at the doors of the