It was decided also that the
butchers' shops should only open on every fourth day, when four days' meat
should be distributed at the official prices. During the earlier period
the daily ration ranged from 80 to 100 grammes, that is, about 2-2/3 oz.
to 3-1/3 oz. in weight, one-fifth part of it being bone in the case of
beef, though, with respect to mutton, the butchers were forbidden to make
up the weight with any bones which did not adhere to the meat. At the
outset of the siege only twenty or thirty horses were slaughtered each
day; but on September 30 the number had risen to 275. A week later there
were nearly thirty shops in Paris where horseflesh was exclusively sold,
and scarcely a day elapsed without an increase in their number. Eventually
horseflesh became virtually the only meat procurable by all classes of the
besieged, but in the earlier period it was patronized chiefly by the
poorer folk, the prices fixed for it by authority being naturally lower
than those edicted for beef and mutton.
With regard to the arrangements made by my father and myself respecting
food, they were, in the earlier days of the siege, very simple. We were
keeping no servant at our flat in the Rue de Miromesnil.
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