them.--In short, the whole business proved that the populace were mere
agents, guided by no impulse of their own, except hunger, and who, when
left to themselves, rather impeded than promoted the designs of both
factions.

"You must have been surprized to see among the list of members arrested,
the name of Laurent Lecointre; but he could never be pardoned for having
reduced the Convention to the embarrassing necessity of prosecuting
Robespierre's associates, and he is now secured, lest his restless
Quixotism should remind the public, that the pretended punishment of
these criminals is in fact only a scandalous impunity.

"We are at present calm, but our distress for bread is intolerable, and
the people occasionally assail the pastry-cooks' shops; which act of
hostility is called, with more pleasantry than truth or feeling, _'La
guerre du pain bis contre la brioche.'_ [The war of brown bread against
cakes.]--God knows, it is not the quality of bread, but the scarcity of
it which excites these discontents.

"The new arithmetic* is more followed, and more interesting, than ever,
though our hopes are all vague, and we neither guess how or by whom they
are to be fulfilled.

* This was a mysterious way of expressing that the royalists were
still gaining ground. It alluded to a custom which then prevailed,
of people asking each other in the street, and sometimes even
assailing the Deputies, with the question of "How much is eight and
a half and eight and a half?"--By which was understood Louis the
Seventeenth.