The things we do!

M.
Foulon, a strict master,[52] but intelligent and useful, expended
sixty thousand francs the previous winter on his estate in giving
employment to the poor. M. Berthier, an industrious and capable
man, had officially surveyed and valued Ile-de-France, to equalize
the taxes, and had reduced the overcharged quotas first one-eighth
and then a quarter. But both of these gentlemen have arranged the
details of the camp against which Paris has risen; both are publicly
proscribed for eight days previously by the Palais-Royal, and, with
a people frightened by disorder, exasperated by hunger, and
stupefied by suspicion, an accused person is a guilty one. -- With
regard to Foulon, as with R?veillon, a story is made up, coined in
the same mint, a sort of currency for popular circulation, and which
the people itself manufactures by casting into one tragic expression
the sum of its sufferings and rankling memories:[53] "He said that
we were worth no more than his horses; and that if we had no bread
we had only to eat grass.


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