"
* Messidor 27, "At four o'clock in the afternoon, Place Maubert, a man
named Marcelin, employed in the Jardin des Plantes, fell down through
starvation and died while assistance was being given to him." On the
previous evening, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, a
laborer on the Pont-au-Change, says " I have eaten nothing all day.
''Another replies : " I have not been home because I have nothing to
give to my wife and children, dying with hunger." About the same date,
a friend of Mallet-Dupan writes to him "that he is daily witness to
people amongst the lower classes dying of inanition in the streets;
others, and principally women, have nothing but garbage to live on,
scraps of refuse vegetables and the blood running out of the slaughter
houses. Laborers, generally, work on short time on account of their
lack of strength and of their exhaustion for want of food."[144] -
Thus ends the rule of the Convention. Well has it looked out for the
interests of the poor! According to the reports of its own inspectors,
"famished stomachs on all sides cry vengeance, beat to arms and sound
the tocsin of alarm[145] . . . . Those who have to dwell daily on
the sacrifices they make to keep themselves alive declare that there
is no hope except in death.
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