* 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."[42150]
One group is wanting in this picture, that of the governors who preside over this wretchedness, which group remains in the background; one might say that it was so designed and composed by some great artist, a lover of contrasts, an inexorable logician, whose invisible hand traces human character unvaryingly, and whose mournful irony unfailingly depicts side by side, in strong relief, the grotesqueness of folly and the seriousness of death. How many perished on account of this misery? Probably more than a million persons.[42151]—
Try to take in at a glance the extraordinary spectacle presented on twenty-six thousand square leagues of territory:
* The immense multitude of the starving in town and country,