From: Jacques Du Pasquier (jacques@dtext.com)
Date: Wed Sep 11 2002 - 02:28:38 MDT
Charles Hixson wrote (10.9.2002/11:32) :
> This was at a time of famine, so I'm sure that the bakers chose to
> maximize their profits, and sell to the rich whatever they could. But
> that's not what I heard the cake was. It was stuff that was caked on
> the ovens. And nobody wanted to eat it even for free. And these were
> people who were starving. But to a rich princess/queen this was merely
> disagreeable food that the peasants could surely eat if they were hungry
> enough. There were all kinds of silly laws at that point, so I can't
> totally discount that the law that you referred to was passed. But the
> cake refered to wasn't anything that anyone not totally desperate would
> consider food... and some who *were* desperate didn't consider it to be
> food. In my small Merriam-Webster this seems to be a combination of
> meanings 1 and 4 of cake, but as it was originally said in french (and
> not modern french) ... Anyone know what the real phrase was? And how it
> translates?
"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, qu'ils mangent de la brioche."
[If they have no bread, let them eat brioche.]
I don't know the source, and it may have been invented/adopted by the
populace to feed the hate against Marie-Antoinette.
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