The contrast between these gay creatures of the Directory period and
the people at large was striking. Indeed much as the vast majority of
the wealthy classes suffered from impoverishment, the laboring
classes, salaried employees of all sorts, and people of fixed income
and of small means, especially in the cities, underwent yet greater
distress. These were found, as a rule, to subsist mainly on daily
government rations of bread at the rate of one pound per person. This
was frequently unfit for food and was distributed to long lines of
people, men, women and children, who were at times obliged to wait
their turn even from dawn to dusk. The very rich could, by various
means, especially by bribery, obtain better bread, but only at
enormous cost. In May, 1796, the market price of good bread was, in
paper, 80 _francs_ (16 dollars) per pound and a little later
provisions could not be bought for paper money at any price.[79]

And here it may be worth mentioning that there was another financial
trouble especially vexatious. While, as we have seen, such enormous
sums, rising from twenty to forty thousand millions of _francs_ in
paper, were put in circulation by the successive governments of the
Revolution, enormous sums had been set afloat in counterfeits by
criminals and by the enemies of France. These came not only from
various parts of the French Republic but from nearly all the
surrounding nations, the main source being London. Thence it was that
Count Joseph de Puisaye sent off cargoes of false paper, excellently
engraved and printed, through ports in Brittany and other disaffected
parts of France. One seizure by General Hoche was declared by him to
exceed in nominal value ten thousand millions of _francs_. With the
exception of a few of these issues, detection was exceedingly
difficult, even for experts; for the vast majority of the people it
was impossible.