The things we do!

In the month of
October 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.


Pages:
205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229