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."[79] "If this lasts," say the workmen, "we shall
have to cut each other's throats, since there is nothing left to live
on.
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