ng I went to the Cafe du Caveau, where, fortunately, they
were kind enough to reserve for me two of those rolls which are called
flutes, and this is the only bread I have eaten for a week at a time."

But this resource is only for the rich. As for the people, to get bread
fit for dogs, they must stand in a line for hours. And here they fight
for it; "they snatch food from one another." There is no more work to
be had; "the work-rooms are deserted;" often, after waiting a whole
day, the workman returns home empty-handed. When he does bring back a
four-pound loaf it costs him 3 francs 12 sous; that is, 12 sous for the
bread, and 3 francs for the lost day. In this long line of unemployed,
excited men, swaying to and fro before the shop-door, dark thoughts are
fermenting: "if the bakers find no flour to-night to bake with, we shall
have nothing to eat to-morrow." An appalling idea;--in presence of which
the whole power of the Government is not too strong; for to keep order
in the midst of famine nothing avails but the sight of an armed force,
palpable and threatening. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV there had been
even greater hunger and misery; but the outbreaks, which were roughly
and promptly put down, were only partial and passing disorders. Some
rioters were at once hung, and others were sent to the galleys. The
peasant or the workman, convinced of his impotence, at once returned to
his stall or his plow. When a wall is too high one does not even think
of scaling it.--But now the wall is cracking--all its custodians, the
clergy, the nobles, the Third-Estate, men of letters, the politicians,
and even the Government itself, making the breach wider. The wretched,
for the first time, discover an issue: they dash through it, at first
in driblets, then in a mass, and rebellion becomes as universal as
resignation was in the past.

II.--Expectations the second cause

Separation and laxity of the administrative forces.--
Investigations of local assemblies. --The people become
aware of their condition.--Convocation of the States-
General.--Hope is born. The coincidence of early Assemblies
with early difficulties.

It is just through this breach that hope steals like a beam of light,
and gradually finds its way down to the depths below. For the last fifty
years it has been rising, and its rays, which first illuminated the
upper class in their splendid apartments in the first story, and next
the mid