are forced to
take it, the markets containing for the most part no other supply than
this flour."--Again, three weeks later, "Food is still very scarce and
poor in quality. The bread is disagreeable to the taste and produces
maladies with which many citizens are suffering, like dysentery and
other inflammatory ailments." The same report, three months later during
the month of Nivose: "Complaints are constantly made of the poor quality
of flour, which, it is said, makes a good many people ill; it causes
severe pain in the intestines, accompanied with a slow fever.--During
Ventose, "the scarcity of every article is extremely great,"[4278]
especially of meat. Some women in the Place Maubert, pass six hours in
a line waiting for it, and do not get the quarter of a pound; in many
stalls there is none at all, not "an ounce" being obtainable to make
broth for the sick. Workmen do not get it in their shops and do without
their soup; they live on "bread and salted herrings." A great many
people groan over "not having eaten bread for a fortnight;" women say
that "they have not had a dish of meat and vegetables (pot au feu) for
a month." Meanwhile "vegetables are astonishingly scarce and excessively
dear.... two sous for a miserable carrot, and as much for two small
leeks." Out of two thousand women who wait at the central market for a
distribution of beans, only six hundred receive any. Potatoes increase
in price in one week from two to three francs a bushel, and oatmeal and
ground peas triple in price. "The grocers have no more brown sugar,
even for the sick," and sell candles and soap only by the half pound.--A
fortnight later candles are wholly wanting in certain quarters, except
in the section storehouse, which is almost empty, each person being
allowed only one. A good many households go to rest at sundown for lack
of lights and do not cook any dinner for lack of coal. Eggs, especially,
are "honored as invisible divinities," while the absent butter "is a
god."[4279] "If this lasts," say the workmen, "we shall have to cut each
other's throats, since there is nothing left to live on."[4280] "Sick
women,[4281] children in their cradles, lie outstretched in the sun," in
the very heart of Paris, in rue Vivienne, on the Pont-Royal, and remain
there "late in the night, demanding alms of the passers-by." "One is
constantly stopped by beggars of both sexes, most of them healthy and
strong," begging, they say, for lack of work. Without