of the currency, made heavy profits and enriched themselves. But to the great majority of people the fall of the Assignats meant grave distress. The prices of bread, of meat, of fuel, of all the necessaries of life, rose as in a siege. One reads of the most fantastic payments, of thousands of francs paid for a dinner, a cab-fare or a load of wood. The sense of the value of money vanished, when its purchasing power declined every day. But it was only those who had plenty of it who possessed the power to purchase at all. There is overwhelming evidence of the general distress in the winter of 1794-95. From all sides complaints came in of the exorbitant dearness of food, and that trouble was aggravated by the intense cold. In Paris and many great cities the authorities bought up food at ruinous prices and distributed it in meagre rations to the poor. But as the year advanced, these rations constantly diminished. The country districts bitterly complained that they were starved in order that the big towns might be fed. 'Many families, entire communes,' wrote an official from Laon, in the summer of 1795, 'have been without bread two or three months and are living on bran or herbs.' Around Caen the peasants were living on unripe peas, beans and green barley. In Picardy 'the great majority of people' overran the woods for food. From all sides the same reports poured in upon the Government. 'Yesterday,' wrote the authorities of Montreuil-sur-Mer, 'more than two hundred of our citizens set out to beg in the country;' and those who could not get food in other ways took it by force. Nor, in spite of the efforts of the authorities, were the large towns better off. Lyons, in January, was without bread 'for five full days.' At Troyes, in March, the public distribution of bread fell to two ounces a day. At Amiens, a few months later, it ceased altogether. At Nancy a traveller noticed a crowd of 'three thousand persons imploring in vain a few pounds of flour.' In Paris the police reported case after case of misery and starvation. 'Every day,' wrote a friend to Mallet du Pan, 'I see people of the poorer class dying of starvation in the streets.... Workmen generally have to work short time, owing to the weakness and exhaustion caused by want of food.'