. . . The municipality, the past six
months, is under the cruel necessity of reducing its subjects to half-
a-pound of corn-bread per day. . . . at the rate of twenty-five
sous the pound, although the pound costs over five francs." After the
suppression of the "maximum " it loses about twenty-five thousand
francs per day.
[129] Ibid. (Letter of Representative Porcher, Caen, Prairial 24,
Messidor 3 and 26. Letter of the municipality of Caen, Messidor 3.)
[130] Ibid. AF.,II., 71. (Letter of the municipality of Auxerre,
Messidor 19.) "We have kept alive thus far through all sorts of
expedients as if by miracle. It has required incalculable efforts,
great expenditure, and really supernatural means to accomplish it.
But there is still one month between this and the end of Thermidor.
How are we going to live! Our people, the majority of whom are farmers
and artisans, are rationed at half-a-pound a day for each person and
this will last but ten or twelve days at most."
[131] Meissner, "Voyage ? Paris," 339. "There was not a morsel of
bread in our inn. I went myself to five or six bakeries and pastry
shops and found them all stripped." He finds in the last one about a
dozen of small Savoy biscuits for which he pays fifteen francs.
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