terrible.
Women and children, half starved, were seated at their doorsteps, with
hardly clothes to cover them decently. They said that, as they had
neither firewood nor coke, they were warmer out-of-doors than in-doors.
Many of the National Guards, instead of bringing their money home to
their families, spent it in drink; and there are many families, composed
entirely of women and children, who, in this land of bureaucracy, are
apparently left to starve whilst it is decided to what category they
belong. The Citizen Mottu, the Ultra-Democratic Mayor, announced that in
his arrondissement all left-handed marriages are to be regarded as
valid, and the left-handed spouses of the National Guards are to receive
the allowance which is granted to the legitimate wives of these
warriors. But a new difficulty has arisen. Left-handed polygamy prevails
to a great extent among the Citizen Mottu's admirers. Is a lady who has
five husbands entitled to five rations, and is a lady who only owns the
fifth of a National Guard to have only one-fifth of a ration? These are
questions which the Citizen Mottu is now attempting to solve. As for the
future, he has solved the matrimonial question by declining to celebrate
marriages, because, he says, this bond is an insult upon those who
prefer to ignore it. As regards marriage, consequently--and that
alone--his arrondissement resembles the kingdom of heaven. I went to
see, yesterday, what was going on in the house of a friend of mine in
the Avenue de l'Imperatrice, who has left Paris. The servant who was in
charge told me that up there they had been unable to obtain bread for
three days, and that the last time that he had presented his ration
ticket he had been given about half an inch of cheese. "How do you live,
then?" I asked. After looking mysteriously round to see that no one was
watching us, he took me down into the cellar, and pointed to some meat
in barrel. "It is half a horse," he said, in the tone of a man who is
showing some one the corpse of his murdered victim. "A neighbouring
coachman killed him, and we salted him down and divided it." Then he
opened a closet in which sat a huge cat. "I am fattening her up for
Christmas-day, we mean to serve her up surrounded with mice, like
sausages," he observed. Many Englishmen regard it as a religious duty to
eat turkey at Christmas, but fancy fulfilling this duty by devouring
cat. It is like an Arab in the desert, who cannot wash his hands when h