than thirty single persons, male and female, old enough to marry and none of them considering it.  On being urged to marry they all reply alike that it is not worth while to bring unfortunate beings like themselves into the world.  I have myself tried to induce some of the women to marry by offering them assistance, but they all reason in this way as if they had consulted together."[9] — “One of my curates sends me word that, although he is the oldest in the province of Touraine, and has seen many things, including excessively high prices for wheat, he remembers no misery so great as that of this year, even in 1709. . . .  Some of the seigniors of Touraine inform me that, being desirous of setting the inhabitants to work by the day, they found very few of them, and these so weak that they were unable to use their hands.”

Those who are able to leave, go.

“A person from Languedoc tells me of vast numbers of peasants deserting that province and taking refuge in Piedmont, Savoy, and Spain, tormented and frightened by the measures resorted to in collecting tithes. . . .  The extortioners sell everything and imprison everybody as if prisoners of war, and even with more avidity and malice, in order to gain something themselves.” — “I met an intendant of one of the finest provinces in the kingdom, who told me that no more farmers could be found there; that parents preferred to send their children to the towns; that living in the surrounding country was daily becoming more horrible to the inhabitants. . . .  A man, well-informed in financial matters, told me that over two hundred families in Normandy had left this year, fearing the collections in their villages.” — At Paris, “the streets swarm with beggars.  One cannot stop before a door without a dozen mendicants besetting him with their importunities.  They are said to be people from the country who, unable to endure the persecutions they have to undergo, take refuge in the cities . . . preferring begging to labor.” — And yet the people of the cities are not much better off.  “An officer of a company in garrison at Mezieres tells me that the poverty of that place is so great that, after the officers had dined in the inns, the people rush in and pillage the remnants.” — “There are more than 12,000 begging workmen in Rouen, quite as many in Tours, etc.  More than 20,000 of these workmen are estimated as having left the kingdom in three months for Spain, Germany, etc.  At Lyons 20,000 workers in silk are watched and kept in sight for fear of their going abroad.”  At Rouen,[10] and in Normandy, “those in easy circumstances find it difficult to get bread, the bulk of the people being entirely without it, and, to ward off starvation, providing themselves with food otherwise repulsive to human beings.” — “Even at Paris,” writes d’Argenson,[11] “I learn that on the day M. le Dauphin and Mme. la Dauphine went to Notre Dame, on passing the bridge of the Tournelle, more than 2,000 women assembled in that quarter crying out, ’Give us bread, or we shall die of hunger.’ . . .  A vicar of the parish of Saint-Marguerite affirms that over eight hundred persons died in the Faubourg St. Antoine between January 20th and February 20th; that the poor expire with cold and hunger in their garrets, and that the priests, arriving too late, see them expire without any possible relief.”