But they are going to claim all salt provisions
like the rest. The new grabbers are worse than the old ones. Six
months more, and we shall all die of hunger. It is better to cross
one's arms at once and go to prison; there, at least, we shall be fed
and not have to work."
In effect, they allow themselves to be imprisoned, the best of the
small cultivators and proprietors by thousands, and Lindet,[92] at the
head of the Commission on Provisions, speaks with dismay of the ground
being no longer tilled, of cattle in France being no more abundant
than the year before, and of nothing to be had to cut this year.
For a strange thing has happened, unheard of in Europe, almost
incredible to any one familiar with the French peasant and his love of
work. This field which he has ploughed, manured, harrowed and reaped
with his own hands, its precious crop, the crop that belongs to him
and on which he has feasted his eyes for seven months, now that it is
ripe, he will not take the trouble to gather it; it would be bothering
himself for some one else. As the crop that he sees there is for the
government, let the government defray the final cost of getting it in;
let it do the harvesting, the reaping, the putting it in sheaves, the
carting and the thrashing in the barn.
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