Columns of
two, three, and four hundred men are seen passing under the lead of
their commandant and of the mayor whom they take along with them.
They enter each farm, mount into the granaries, estimate the
quantity of grain thrashed out, and force the proprietor to sign an
agreement to bring it to market the following week. Sometimes, as
they are hungry, they compel people to give them something to eat
and drink on the spot, and it will not do to enrage them, - a
farmer and his wife come near being hung in their own barn.
Their effort is useless: Wheat is impounded and hunted up in vain;
it takes to the earth or slips off like a frightened animal. In
vain do insurrections continue. In vain do armed mobs, in all the
market-towns of the department,[27] subject grain to a forced
reduction of price. Wheat becomes scarcer and dearer from month to
month, rising in price from twenty-six francs to thirty-three. And
because the outraged farmer "brings now a very little," just "what
is necessary to sacrifice in order to avoid threats, he sells at
home, or in the inns, to the flour-dealers from Paris.
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