184 BAILLY. 



hundred sacks of flour had arrived at Poissy, I imme- 

 diately despatched a hundred wagons from Paris to 

 fetch them. And behold, in the evening, an officer with- 

 out powers and without orders, related before me, that 

 having met some wagons on the Poissy road, he made 

 them go back, because he did not think that there was a 

 wharf for any loaded barge on the Seine. It would be 

 difficult for me to describe the despair and the auger 

 into which this recital threw me. We were obliged to 

 put sentinels at the bakers' doors ! " 



The despair and the anger of Bailly were very natural. 

 Even now, after more than half a century, no one thinks 

 without a shudder of that obscure individual who, from 

 not believing that a loaded barge could get up to Poissy, 

 was going, on the 21st August, 1789, to plunge the capi- 

 tal into bloody disorders. 



By means of perseverance, devotedness, and courage, 

 Bailly succeeded in overcoming all the difficulties that 

 the real scarcity, and the fictitious one, which was still 

 more redoubtable, caused daily to arise. He succeeded, 

 but his health from that epoch was deeply injured ; his 

 mind had undergone several of those severe shocks that 

 we can never entirely recover from. Our colleague 

 said, " when I used to pass the bakers' shops during the 

 scarcity, and saw them besieged by a crowd, my heart 

 sunk within me ; and even now that abundance has been 

 restored to us, the sight of one of those shops strikes me 

 with a deep emotion." 



The administrative conflicts, the source of which lay 

 in the very bosom of the Council of the Commune, daily 

 drew from Bailly the following exclamation, a faithful 

 image of his mind : / have ceased to be happy. The 

 embarrassments that proceeded from external sources 



