The people, meanwhile, were bitterly complaining of famine, and the more gold was carried to the treasury, the more bread was bought up before the eyes of those who were deprived of it from its increased price. It mattered not that some was given away in charity by the king, and more, to suit his own purposes, by the duke of Orleans; the people were rendered unable to purchase it, and furnished with the plea of want, wherewith to make the streets of Paris echo. It would have been better to have let the exchange of wedding rings for bread be made without the interposition of the king or his ministers, even without taking into consideration the events which followed. A report was soon industriously spread that the bread furnished by court charity was of a bad quality. It was believed, like everything that was then said against the court; and the consequence was that an anomalous and melancholy sight was seen by as many as walked in the city. Clamorous, starving crowds besieged the bakers’ shops, and carried off all the bread from their ovens, all the flour from their bins; while the discontented among the mob politicians of the Orleans faction were on the way to snatch the food from the mouths of the hungry and throw it into the river, and to cut the sacks, and mix the flour with the puddles of the streets. Want and waste, faction and delusion were here seen in their direct extremes. At this time, Charles and Marguerite did not allow their children to go out under any guardianship but that of their father, as it was impossible to foresee what might happen in the streets before they could get home again. They were as safe as any could be at such a time;—safer than the few who ventured abroad in carriages at the risk of insult wherever they turned; safer than the sordidly fed and clad, who were seized upon by the agents of faction to augment their mobs, and be made the instruments of violence under the penalty of suffering it themselves. The parents and children were also safer together than separate; as a domestic party, abroad to take the air, presented as unsuspicious a group, and one as likely to pass unnoticed, as could well be imagined. Yet they had their occasional alarms; and when there was no cause to fear for themselves, were too often grieved and shocked at what they beheld inflicted on others. “O papa!” cried Julien, one day, as they were walking; “what are they doing at Maigrot’s shop? I do believe the crowd is coming there next.” Maigrot was a baker, well known to Charles’s family, and much beloved by the children, on account of the little hot cakes which seemed to be always ready to pop out of the oven and into their mouths, when they went with the servant to deliver orders or pay bills.