Access to the Bois de Boulogne was forbidden. Acres of timber had already
been felled there, and from the open spaces the mild September breeze
occasionally wafted the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the
grunting of pigs. Our live stock consisted of 30,000 oxen, 175,000 sheep,
8,800 pigs, and 6,000 milch-cows. Little did we think how soon those
animals (apart from the milch-cows) would be consumed! Few of us were
aware that, according to Maxime Ducamp's great work on Paris, we had
hitherto consumed, on an average, every day of the year, 935 oxen, 4680
sheep, 570 pigs, and 600 calves, to say nothing of 46,000 head of poultry,
game, etc., 50 tons of fish, and 670,000 eggs.
Turning from the Bois de Boulogne, which had become our principal ranch
and sheep-walk, one found companies of National Guards learning the
"goose-step" in the Champs Elysees and the Cours-la-Reine. Regulars were
appropriately encamped both in the Avenue de la Grande Armee and on the
Champ de Mars. Field-guns and caissons filled the Tuileries garden, whilst
in the grounds of the Luxembourg Palace one again found cattle and sheep;
yet other members of the bovine and ovine species being installed,
singularly enough, almost cheek by jowl with the hungry wild beasts of the
Jardin des Plantes, whose mouths fairly watered at the sight of their
natural prey.
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