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Show Quiet in France. 0UIIET prevails in France; and yet it can hardly mean the quiet that 1 follows a spirit which has been subdued and a resolve that is blasted. Bather is it the quiet belonging to patience pa-tience and a Christian submission to God's will. The decrees against the French religious re-ligious orders have now been executed rigorously in the eighty-six departments depart-ments into which Fiance is divided with the exception of the departments or Morbihan. where they will be enforced en-forced on Monday, and in Finislere, where they will be carried out before the end of next week. Nothing really serious has happened in Brittany or elsewhere in connection with the resistance to the government officials closing the recalcitrant . convent con-vent schools. Credit for this is largely large-ly due to the patriotism of Emile de Villiers. Catholic and royalist deputy of Finistere. to Count Albert 1p Mnn to Senator Admiral de Cuverville, and to Abbe Gayraud, the Catholic deputy, who have made public speeches all through the excited districts of Brittany, Brit-tany, exhorting the people to abstain from bloodshed and not to attack the government troops, and pointing out to the hot-headed Bretons that by lawful protestation they have a good chance of acquiring universal sympathy and of finally redressing what they consider consid-er to be their wrongs. On the other hand, there are a number of nationalist national-ist emissaries in Brittany who are doing do-ing all they can to persuade country folk to headstrong resistance and civil war. The situation is exceedingly picturesque, pic-turesque, and the beautiful briar hedges that line every lane and road in Brittany conceal peasants in national na-tional costume posted as sentries. These videttes are provided with bugles, bu-gles, which they blow as a warning of the approach of government troops, which are being concentrated in great force. Peasants are collected In groups near the villages, and have completely deserted the fields, where the ripe wheat and buckwheat, which are the national food of the people, peo-ple, are flattening on the soil, in imminent im-minent danger of rotting. Village folk kneel bareheaded before the nuns and chant their hymns, and sing weird Gallic or local songs. Young peasants gallop about on wiry, shaggy Breton ponies, carrying tidings hither and thither, and there are plenty of shouts of "Long live the nuns!"-"Long live liberty!" "Down with the ministry!" etc. The locksmiths who pick the locks of the refractory schools are protected by a triple row of soldiers, and when mounted gendarmes and dragoons appear ap-pear their horses are surrounded by dense crowds of peasantry, who press about them, crying, "Long live the army!" The military- force in Brittany is now so overwhelming that any resistance, even if offered, which is not at all likely, would at once be suppressed, and the calm and patriotic attitude of Comte Albert de Mun and the other reactionary deputies is so unusual that it deserves to be signalized. |