ers and butchers, enduring the same
cold, and that they have already endured it and will yet endure it a
month and more. Words are wanting to describe the sufferings of these
long lines of motionless beings, during the night, at daybreak, standing
there five or six hours, with the blast driving through their rags and
their feet freezing.--Ventose is beginning, and the ration of bread is
reduced to a pound and a half;[42138] Ventose ends, and the ration of
bread, kept at a pound and a half for the three hundred and twenty-four
laborers, falls to one pound; in fact, a great many get none at all,
many only a half and a quarter of a pound. Germinal follows and the
Committee of Public Safety, finding that its magazines are giving out,
limits all rations to a quarter of a pound. Thereupon, on the 12th
of Germinal, an insurrection of workmen and women breaks out; the
Convention is invaded and liberated by military force. Paris is declared
in a state of siege and the government, again in the saddle, tightens
the reins. Thenceforth, the ration of meat served out every four or five
days, is a quarter of a pound; bread averages every day, sometimes
five, sometimes six and sometimes seven ounces, at long intervals eight
ounces, often three, two and one ounce and a half, or even none at all;
while this bread, black and "making mischief," becomes more and more
worthless and detestable.[42139] People who are well off live on
potatoes, but only for them, for, in the middle of Germinal, these cost
fifteen francs the bushel and, towards the end, twenty francs; towards
the end of Messidor, forty-five francs; in the first month of the
Directory, one hundred and eighty francs, and then two hundred
and eighty-four francs, whilst other produce goes up at the same
rates.--After the abolition of the "maximum" the evil springs not from
a lack of provisions, but from their dearness: the shops are well
supplied. Whoever comes with a full purse gets what he wants[42140]: The
former rich, the property owners and large capitalists, may eat on the
condition that they hand their bundles of assignats over, that they
withdrawing their last louis from its hiding-place, that they sell
their jewelry, clocks, furniture and clothes. And the nouveaux rich,
the speculators, the suppliers, the happy and extravagant robbers, spend
four hundred, one thousand, three thousand, then five thousand francs
for their dinner, and revel in the great eating establishments on