astille, a
laborer on the Pont-au-Change, says "I have eaten nothing all day.
''Another replies: "I have not been home because I have nothing to give
to my wife and children, dying with hunger." About the same date, a
friend of Mallet-Dupan writes to him "that he is daily witness to people
amongst the lower classes dying of inanition in the streets; others, and
principally women, have nothing but garbage to live on, scraps of refuse
vegetables and the blood running out of the slaughter houses. Laborers,
generally, work on short time on account of their lack of strength and
of their exhaustion for want of food."[42144]--

Thus ends the rule of the Convention. Well has it looked out for the
interests of the poor! According to the reports of its own inspectors,
"famished stomachs on all sides cry vengeance, beat to arms and sound
the tocsin of alarm[42145].... Those who have to dwell daily on the
sacrifices they make to keep themselves alive declare that there is
no hope except in death." Are they going to be relieved by the new
government which the Convention imposes on them with thunders of
artillery and in which it perpetuates itself?[42146]--

* Brumaire 28, "Most of the workmen in the 'Temple' and 'Gravilliers'
sections have done no work for want of bread."

* Brumaire 24, "Citizens of all classes refuse to mount guard because
they have nothing to eat."

* Brumaire 25, "In the 'Gravilliers' section the women say that
they have sold all that they possessed, while others, in the
'Faubourg-Antoine' section, declare that it would be better to be shot
down."

* Brumaire 30, "A woman beside herself came and asked a baker to kill
her children as she had nothing to give them to eat."

* Frimaire 1, 2, 3, and 4, "In many of the sections bread is given out
only in the evening, in others at one o'clock in the morning, and of
very poor quality.... Several sections yesterday had no bread."

* Frimaire 7, the inspectors declare that "the hospitals soon will not
be vast enough to hold the sick and the wretched."

* Frimaire 14, At the central market a woman nursing her child sunk down
with inanition." A few days before this, "a man fell down from weakness,
on his way to Bourg l'Abbe."

"All our reports," say the district administrators, "resound with
shrieks of despair." People are infatuated; "it seems to us that a crazy
spirit prevails universally, we often encounter people in the street
who, although alone, gesticulate