Bailly, a magistrate of only one day's standing, considered that the multitude understands nothing, hears nothing when bread fails; that a scarcity, either real or supposed, is the great promoter of riots; that all classes of the population grant their sympathy to whoever cries, _I am hungry_; that this lamentable cry soon unites individuals of all ages, of both sexes, of every condition, in one common sentiment of blind fury; that no human power could maintain order and tranquillity in the bosom of a population that dreads the want of food; he therefore resolved to devote his days and his nights to provisioning the capital; to deserve, as he himself said, the title of the _Father nourisher of the Parisians_,--that title of which he showed himself always so proud, after having painfully gained it. Bailly day by day recorded in his Memoirs a statement 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 reduced. 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 anxieties 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 destiny 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 hundred sacks of flour had arrived at Poissy, I immediately despatched a hundred wagons from Paris to fetch them. And behold, in the evening, an officer without powers and without orders, related before me, that having met some wagons on the Poissy road, he made them go back, because he did not think that there was a wharf for any loaded barge on the Seine. It would be difficult for me to describe the despair and the anger into which this recital threw me. We were obliged to put sentinels at the bakers' doors!"