  Rejoice, poor housewives, who, on days of poverty, were obliged to carry to the Mont-de-PiÉtÉ[80] the discoloured remains of your wedding dress, or your husband’s Sunday coat; rejoice, artisans, who, after a day of toil, thought your bed so hard since your last mattress was taken to the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, to rejoin your last pair of sheets. The Commune has decreed that “all objects in pawn at the Mont-de-PiÉtÉ, for a sum not exceeding twenty francs, shall be given back gratuitously to all persons who shall prove their legitimate right to the said objects.” Thanks to this benevolent decree, you may now hope that things you have pawned will be restored to you before three or four hundred days! Count on your fingers; the number of articles to which the decree applies is at least 1,200,000. As there are only three offices for the claimants to apply to, and considering the forms which have to be observed, I do not think more than three thousand objects can be given back daily; the Commune says four thousand, but the Commune does not know what it is talking about. However, even if we calculate four thousand a-day, the whole would take up ten or twelve months. During this time men and women, whom poverty had long ere this taught the road to the Mont-de-PiÉtÉ, would have to get up early, neglect the daily work by which they live, and go and stand awaiting their turn at the office, frozen in winter, baked in summer, thankful to obtain a moment’s rest upon one of the wooden benches in the great bare hall; and when they have been there a long, weary time, to see their number, drawn by lot, put off to the next day or the day after, or the week or the month following perhaps. Still we must not blame the Commune for the sad disappointment of this long delay, it would be impossible to shorten it. One thing, which is less impossible, is to indemnify the administration of the Mont-de-PiÉtÉ for this gratuitous restitution. Citizen Jourde, delegate of the finances, says, “I will give 100,000 francs a-week.” Without stopping to consider where this able political economist means to get his weekly 100,000 francs, I will be content with remarking that this sum would in no wise cover the loss to the Mont-de-PiÉtÉ, and that the Commune will only be giving alms out of other people’s purses. If, however, thanks to this decree, some few poor creatures are enabled to get back those goods and chattels which they were obliged to dispose of in the hour of need, there will not be much cause to complain. The Mont-de-PiÉtÉ usually does a very good business, and there will always be enough misery in Paris for it to grow rich upon. Besides, the Commune owes the poor wounded, mutilated, dying fellows who have been brought from Neuilly and Issy, at least a mattress to die in some little comfort upon. NOTES: |
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