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Our only currency here consists of assignats of 5 livres, 50, 100, 200, and upwards: therefore in making purchases, you must accommodate your wants to the value of your assignat, or you must owe the shopkeeper, or the shopkeeper must owe you; and, in short, as an old woman assured me to-day, "C'est de quoi faire perdre la tete," and, if it lasted long, it would be the death of her.
He was the strongest advocate of the assignat measures, and whatever interest his friends took in them, it need not be doubted that he believed them salutary and wise. The Court in its new perplexity, helplessly entangled in Paris, having learnt just a little from experience, now turned to Mirabeau for assistance.
Accordingly, an assignat of one hundred francs is worth in June, 1795, four francs, in August three francs, in November fifteen sous, in December ten sous, and then five sous. Naturally, all provisions rise proportionately in price.
Now, the difference between the selling and cost price is enormous; it keeps on increasing as the assignat declines and it is the government which pays this. "You furnish bread at three sous," said Dubois-Crance, Floreal 16, year III, "and it costs you four francs. Paris consumes 8,000 quintals of meal daily, which expenditure alone amounts to 1,200 millions per annum."
You would scarcely imagine that this copper is deemed worthy to be hoarded; yet such is the people's aversion from the paper, and such their mistrust of the government, that not an housewife will part with one of these pieces while she has an assignat in her possession; and those who are rich enough to keep a few livres by them, amass and bury this copper treasure with the utmost solicitude and secresy.
Before it occurred to the artist to take the sheet of paper out of her hands, she folded it carefully with her coarse red fingers into a tiny square, slipped it over her heart between her stays and her shift, handed the painter an assignat for five livres, and wishing the company a very good day, hobbled light-heartedly to the door and so out of the room.
That oeconomy, which was one of the most valuable characteristics of the French, is now comparatively disregarded. The people who receive what they earn in a currency they hold in contempt, are more anxious to spend than to save; and those who formerly hoarded six liards or twelve sols pieces with great care, would think it folly to hoard an assignat, whatever its nominal value.
Ominous it was when persons compelled to take this loan found for an assignat of one hundred francs only one franc was allowed. Next a National Bank was proposed; but capitalists were loath to embark in banking while the howls of the mob against all who had anything especially to do with money resounded in every city. At last the Directory bethought themselves of another expedient.
Until that moment I believed Darby had repossessed himself of the assignat when Crofts lay insensible on the ground; at least I remembered well that he stooped over him and appeared to take something from him. While I was puzzling my mind on this point, I did not remark that the lawyer was proceeding to impress on the jury the full force of conviction such a circumstance implied.
"A month after the fall of Robespierre," she says, "I considered as to the means of providing for myself, for a mother seventy years of age, my sick husband, my child nine years old, and part of my ruined family. I now possessed nothing in the world but an assignat of five hundred francs. I had become responsible for my husband's debts, to the amount of thirty thousand francs. I chose St.
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