SCARCITY OF FOOD. 183 



title of the Father nourisher of the Parisians, that title 

 of which he showed himself always so proud, after hav- 

 ing painfully gained it. 



Bailly day by day recorded in his Memoirs a state- 

 ment of his actions, of his anxieties, and of his fears. It 

 may be good for the instruction of the more fortunate 

 administrators of the present epoch, to insert here a few 

 lines from the journal of our colleague. 



" 18th August. Our provisions are very much re- 

 duced. Those of the morrow depend strictly on the 

 arrangements made on the previous evening ; and now 

 amidst this distress, we learn that our flour-wagons have 

 been stopped at Bourg-la-Reine ; that some banditti are 

 pillaging the markets in the direction of Rouen, that they 

 have seized twenty wagons of flour that were destined 

 for us ; ... that the unfortunate Sauvage was massacred 

 at Saint Germain-en-Laye ; . . . . that Thomassin escaped 

 with difficulty from the fury of the populace at Choisy." 



By repeating either these literal words, or something 

 equivalent to them, for every day of distress throughout 

 the year 1789, an exact idea may be formed of the anx- 

 ieties that Bailly experienced from the morning after his 

 installation as mayor. I deceive myself; to complete 

 the picture we ought also to record the unreflecting and 

 inconsiderate actions of a multitude of people whose des- 

 tiny appeared to be, to meddle with every thing and to 

 spoil every thing. I will not resist the wish to show one 

 of these self-important men. starving (or very nearly so) 

 the city of Paris. 



" 21st August. The store of victuals, Bailly says, 

 was so scanty, that the lives of the inhabitants of Paris 

 depended on the somewhat mathematical precision of our 

 arrangements. Having learnt that a barge with eighteen 



