The things we do!

"The constabulary is
disheartened," writes the sub-delegate; "the determination of the
people is wonderful; I am frightened at what I have seen and heard."
-- After the 13th of July, 1788, the day of the hail-storm, despair
seized the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have
been, it was impossible to assist them. "Not a workshop is
open;[2] the noblemen and the bourgeois, obliged to grant delays in
the payment of their incomes, can give no work." Accordingly, "the
famished people are on the point of risking life for life," and,
publicly and boldly, they seek food wherever it can be found. At
Conflans-Saint-Honorine, Eragny, Neuville, Chenevi?res, at Cergy,
Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and Beaumont, men, women, and children,
the hole parish, range the country, set snares, and destroy the
burrows. "The rumor is current that the Government, informed of the
damage done by the game to cultivators, allows its destruction . .
. and really the hares ravaged about a fifth of the crop.


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