ladies of high rank, refugees in Rome, send word that their domestics
should be discharged and their daughters placed in convents. Before the
end of 1789 there are so many fugitives in Switzerland that a house,
it is said, brings in more rent than it is worth as capital. With this
first emigration, which is that of the chief spendthrifts, the Count
d'Artois, Prince de Conti, Duc de Bourbon, and so many others, the
opulent foreigners have left, and, at the head of them, the Duchesse
de l'Infantado, who spent 800,000 livres a year. There are only three
Englishmen in Paris.
It used to be a city of luxury, it was the European hot-house of costly
and refined pleasures, but once the glass was broken then the delicate
plants perish, their lovers leave, and there is no employment now for
the innumerable hands which cultivated them. Fortunate are they who at
the relief works obtain a miserable sum by handling a pick-axe! "I saw,"
says Bailly, "mercers, jewellers, and merchants implore the favor of
being employed at twenty sous the day." Enumerate, if you can, in one or
two recognized callings, the hands which are doing nothing:[1413] 1,200
hair-dressers keep about 6,000 journeymen; 2,000 others follow the same
calling in private-houses; 6,000 lackeys do but little else than this
work. The body of tailors is composed of 2,800 masters, who have under
them 5,000 workmen. "Add to these the number privately employed--the
refugees in privileged places like the abbeys of Saint-Germain and
Saint-Marcel, the vast enclosure of the Temple, that of Saint-John the
Lateran, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and you will find at least
12,000 persons cutting, fitting, and sewing." How many in these two
groups are now idle! How many others are walking the streets, such
as upholsterers, lace-makers, embroiderers, fan-makers, gilders,
carnage-makers, binders, engravers, and all the other producers of
Parisian nick-nacks! For those who are still at work how many days are
lost at the doors of bakers' shops and in patrolling as National
Guards! Gatherings are formed in spite of the prohibitions of the
Hôtel-de-Ville,[1414] and the crowd openly discuss their miserable
condition: 3,000 journeymen-tailors near the Colonnade,
as many journeymen-shoemakers in the Place Louis XV., the
journeymen-hairdressers in the Champs-Elysees, 4,000 domestics without
places on the approaches to the Louvre,--and their propositions are on a
level with their intelligence. Servants demand the expulsion from
Paris of the Savoyards who enter into competition with them.
Journeymen-tailors demand that a day's wages be fixed at forty sous, and
that the old-clothes dealers shall not be allowed to make new ones. The
journeymen-shoemakers declare that those who make shoes below the fixed
price shall be driven out of the kingdom. Each of these irritated and
agitated crowds contains the germ of an outbreak--and, in truth, these
germs are found on every pavement in Paris: at the relief works, which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account