Always the same alimentary system, the same long lines of people
waiting at, and before, dawn in every quarter of Paris, in the dark,
for a long time, and often to no purpose, subject to the brutalities
of the strong and the outrages of the licentious! On the 9th of
Thermidor, the daily trot of the multitude in quest of food has lasted
uninterruptedly for seventeen months, accompanied with outrages of the
worst kind because there is less terror and less submissiveness, with
more obstinacy because provisions at free sale are dearer, with
greater privation because the ration distributed is smaller, and with
more sombre despair because each household, having consumed its
stores, has nothing of its own to make up for the insufficiencies of
public charity. - And to cap it all, the winter of 1794-1795 is so
cold[137] that the Seine freezes and people cross the Loire on foot.
Rafts no longer arrive and, to obtain fire-wood, it is necessary "to
cut down trees at Boulogne, Vincennes, Verri?res, St. Cloud, Meudon
and two other forests in the vicinity." Fuel costs "four hundred
francs per cord of wood, forty sous for a bushel of charcoal, twenty
sous for a small basket.
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