" "I still hear with a shudder," says
Meissner, "the weak, melancholy voice of a well-dressed woman who
stopped me in the rue du Bac, to tell me in accents indicative both of
shame and despair: 'Ah, Sir, do help me! I am not an outcast. I have
some talent - you may have seen some of my works in the salon. I have
had nothing to eat for two days and I am crazy for want of food.'"
Again, in June, 1796, the inspectors state that despair and
despondency have reached the highest point, only one cry being heard-
misery !.. . . Our reports all teem with groans and complaints. .
. . Pallor and suffering are stamped on all faces. . . . Each
day presents a sadder and more melancholy aspect." And
repeatedly,[149] they sum up their scattered observations in a general
statement:
* "A mournful silence, the deepest distress on every countenance;
* the most intense hatred of the government in general developed in
all conversations;
* contempt for all existing authority;
* an insolent luxuriousness, insulting to the wretchedness of the poor
rentiers who expire with hunger in their garrets, no longer possessing
the courage to crawl to the Treasury and get the wherewithal to
prolong their misery for a few days;
* the worthy father of a family daily deciding what article of
furniture he will sell to make up for what is lacking in his wages
that he may buy a half-pound of bread;
* every sort of provision increasing in price sixty times an hour;
* the smallest business dependent on the fall of assignats;
* intriguers of all parties overthrowing each other only to get
offices;
* the intoxicated soldier boasting of the services he has rendered and
is to render, and abandoning himself shamelessly to every sort of
debauchery;
* commercial houses transformed into dens of thieves;
* rascals become traders and traders become rascals; the most sordid
cupidity and a mortal egoism-
such is the picture presented by Paris.
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