"
Such is the aspect of these huge artificial agglomerations, where the
soil, made sterile by habitation, bears only stones, and where twenty,
thirty, fifty and a hundred thousand suffering stomachs have to obtain
from ten, twenty and thirty leagues off their first and last mouthful
of food. Within these close pens long lines of human sheep huddle
together every day bleating and trembling around almost empty troughs,
and only through extraordinary efforts do the shepherds daily succeed
in providing them with a little nourishment. The central government,
strenuously appealed to, enlarges or defines the circle of their
requisitions; it authorizes them to borrow, to tax themselves; it
lends or gives to them millions of assignats;[120] frequently, in
cases of extreme want, it allows them to take so much grain or rice
from its storehouses, for a week's supply. - But, in truth, this sort
of life is not living, it is only not dying. For one half, and more
than one half of the inhabitants simply subsist on rations of bread
obtained by long waiting for it at the end of a string of people and
delivered at a reduced price. What rations and what bread! "It
seems," says the municipality of Troyes, "that[121] the country has
anathematized the towns.
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