Every countenance bears traces of the famine. . . Faces
are of livid hue. . . . It is impossible to await the new crop,
until the end of Fructidor." - Such are the exclamations everywhere.
The object now, indeed, is to cross the narrowest and most terrible
defile; a fortnight more of absolute fasting and hundreds of thousands
of lives would be sacrificed.[130] At this moment the government half
opens the doors of its storehouses; it lends a few sacks of flour on
condition of re-payment, - for example, at Cherbourg a few hundreds of
quintals of oats; by means of oat bread, the poor can subsist until
the coming harvest. But above all, it doubles its guard and shows its
bayonets. At Nancy, a traveler sees[131] "more than three thousand
persons soliciting in vain for a few pounds of flour." They are
dispersed with the butt-ends of muskets. - Thus are the peasantry
taught patriotism and the townspeople patience. Physical constraint
exercised on all in the name of all; this is the only procedure which
an arbitrary socialism can resort to for the distribution of food and
to discipline starvation.
VII. Misery at Paris.
Famine and misery at Paris.
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