"The Carthusians of Paris furnish the poor with eighteen hundred pounds of bread per week.

During the winter of 1784 there is an increase of alms-giving in all the religious establishments; their farmers distribute aid among the poor people of the country, and, to provide for these extra necessities, many of the communities increase the rigor of their abstinences." When at the end of 1789, their suppression is in question, I find a number of protests in their favor, written by municipal officers, by prominent individuals, by a crowd of inhabitants, workmen and peasants, and these columns of rustic signatures are eloquent.

Seven hundred families of Cateau-Cambresis[1309] send in a petition to retain "the worthy abbes and monks of the Abbey of St.Andrew, their common fathers and benefactors, who fed them during the tempest." The inhabitants of St.Savin, in the Pyrenees, "portray with tears of grief their consternation" at the prospect of suppressing their abbey of Benedictines, the sole charitable organization in this poor country.

At Sierk, Thionville, "the Chartreuse," say the leading citizens, "is, for us, in every respect, the Ark of the Lord; it is the main support of from more than twelve to fifteen hundred persons who come it every day in the week.

This year the monks have distributed amongst them their own store of grain at sixteen livres less than the current price." The regular canons of Domievre, in Lorrraine, feed sixty poor persons twice a week; it is essential to retain them, says the petition, "out of pity and compassion for poor beings whose misery cannot be imagined; where there no regular convents and canons in their dependency, the poor cry with misery."[1310] At Moutiers-Saint-John, near Semur in Burgundy, the Benedictines of Saint-Maur support the entire village and supply it this year with food during the famine.