eat, and, now and then, fill his
pocket book. He slips over the accounts, he gives the village receipts
on furnishing three-quarters or a half of the demand, often in spoilt or
mixed grain or poor flour, while those who have no rusty wheat get it
of their neighbors. Instead of parting with a hundred quintals they part
with fifty, while the quantity of grain in the Paris markets is not
only insufficient, but the grain blackens or sprouts and the flour grows
musty. In vain the government makes clerks and depositaries of butchers
and grocers, allowing them five or ten per cent. profit on retail sales
of the food it supplies them with at wholesale, and thus creates in
Paris, at the expense of all France, an artificial drop in prices.
Naturally, the bread[4274] which, thanks to the State, costs three sous
in Paris, is furtively carried out of Paris into the suburbs, where six
sous are obtained for it. There is the same furtive leakage for other
food furnished by the State on the same conditions to other dealers; the
tax is a burden which forces them to go outside their shops. Food finds
its level like water, not alone outside of Paris, but in Paris itself.

* Naturally, "the grocers peddle their goods" secretly, "sugar, candles,
soap, butter, dried vegetables, meat pies and the rest," amongst private
houses, in which these articles are bought at any price.

* Naturally, the butcher keeps his large pieces of beef and choice
morsels for the large eating houses, and for rich customers who pay him
whatever profit he asks.

* Naturally, whoever is in authority, or has the power, uses it to
supply himself first, largely, and in preference; we have seen the
levies of the revolutionary committees, superintendents and agents; as
soon as rations are allotted to all mouths, each potentate will have
several rations delivered for his mouth alone; in the meantime[4275] the
patriots who guard the barriers appropriate all provisions that arrive,
and the next morning, should any scolding appear in the orders of the
day, it is but slight.

Such are the two results of the system: not only is the food which is
supplied to Paris scant and poor, but the regular consumers of it, those
who take their turn to get it, obtain but a small portion, and that
the worst.[4276] A certain inspector, on going to the corn market for
a sample of flour, writes "that it cannot be called flour;[4277] it is
ground bran," and not a nutritive substance; the bakers