o'clock in the forenoon. Not a breath of wind. It was the hottest
July ever known. In the narrow Rue de Jerusalem a hundred or so citizens
of the Section were waiting in queue at the baker's door, under the eye
of four National Guards who stood at ease smoking their pipes.

The National Convention had decreed the _maximum_,--and instantly corn
and flour had disappeared. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, the
Parisians had to rise before daybreak if they wished to eat. The crowd
was lined up, men, women and children tightly packed together, under a
sky of molten lead. The heat beat down on the rotting foulness of the
kennels and exaggerated the stench of unwashed, sweating humanity. All
were pushing, abusing their neighbours, exchanging looks fraught with
every sort of emotion one human being can feel for another,--dislike,
disgust, interest, attraction, indifference. Painful experience had
taught them there was not bread enough for everybody; so the late comers
were always trying to push forward, while those who lost ground
complained bitterly and indignantly and vainly claimed their rights.
Women shoved and elbowed savagely to keep their place or squeeze into a
better. When the press grew too intolerable, cries rose of "Stop pushing
there!" while each and all protested they could not help it--it was
someone else pushing them.

To obviate these daily scenes of disorder, the officials appointed by
the Section had conceived the notion of fastening a rope to the
shop-door which each applicant held in his proper order; but hands at
such close quarters _would_ come in contact on the rope and a struggle
would result. Whoever lost hold could never recover it, while the
disappointed and the mischievously inclined sometimes cut the cord. In
the end the plan had to be abandoned.

On this occasion there was the usual suffocation and confusion. While
some swore they were dying, others indulged in jokes or loose remarks;
all abused the aristocrats and federalists, authors of all the misery.
When a dog ran by, wags hailed the beast as Pitt. More than once a loud
slap showed that some _citoyenne_ in the line had resented with a
vigorous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while, pressed close
against her neighbour, a young servant girl, with eyes half shut and
mouth half open, stood sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, or
gesture, or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour of the
coarse-minded populace, a knot o