ll kinds, curbs on the Sansculottic Press;
above all, Bread, Bread.

Purveyors prowl the country far and wide, with the appetite of lions;
detect hidden grain, purchase open grain; by gentle means or forcible,
must and will find grain. A most thankless task; and so difficult,
so dangerous,--even if a man did gain some trifle by it! On the 19th
August, there is food for one day. (See Bailly, Memoires, ii. 137-409.)
Complaints there are that the food is spoiled, and produces an effect
on the intestines: not corn but plaster-of-Paris! Which effect on the
intestines, as well as that 'smarting in the throat and palate,' a
Townhall Proclamation warns you to disregard, or even to consider as
drastic-beneficial. The Mayor of Saint-Denis, so black was his bread,
has, by a dyspeptic populace, been hanged on the Lanterne there.
National Guards protect the Paris Corn-Market: first ten suffice; then
six hundred. (Hist. Parl. ii. 421.) Busy are ye, Bailly, Brissot de
Warville, Condorcet, and ye others!

For, as just hinted, there is a Municipal Constitution to be made too.
The old Bastille Electors, after some ten days of psalmodying over their
glorious victory, began to hear it asked, in a splenetic tone, Who put
you there? They accordingly had to give place, not without moanings, and
audible growlings on both sides, to a new larger Body, specially elected
for that post. Which new Body, augmented, altered, then fixed finally
at the number of Three Hundred, with the title of Town Representatives
(Representans de la Commune), now sits there; rightly portioned into
Committees; assiduous making a Constitution; at all moments when not
seeking flour.

And such a Constitution; little short of miraculous: one that shall
'consolidate the Revolution'! The Revolution is finished, then? Mayor
Bailly and all respectable friends of Freedom would fain think so. Your
Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled, needs only to be poured into
shapes, of Constitution, and 'consolidated' therein? Could it, indeed,
contrive to cool; which last, however, is precisely the doubtful thing,
or even the not doubtful!

Unhappy friends of Freedom; consolidating a Revolution! They must sit
at work there, their pavilion spread on very Chaos; between two hostile
worlds, the Upper Court-world, the Nether Sansculottic one; and, beaten
on by both, toil painfully, perilously,--doing, in sad literal earnest,
'the impossible.'

Chapter 1.6.V.

The Fourth Estat