M. Combes and _his employers_ the “Grand Orient” must see that they have gone a little too far. Civil war on a small scale has been raging on many points of France for two or three weeks; and they would be running blood if French Catholics carried concealed weapons as people do in South Carolina and Kentucky. As it is, there have only been innumerable broken limbs and heads and no end of arrests. M. de Dion, a deputy wearing his insignia of office, which offered him no immunity, appeared handcuffed before the police court, and was there and then condemned to three days’ imprisonment for “manifesting.” A young lady of twenty was condemned to eight days’ imprisonment for having cried “Capon” to a justice of the peace, who beat a hasty retreat when he found himself confronted by a few hundred men in the hall of a convent into which he had forced an entrance with the aid of state locksmiths, or _crocheteurs_. Here on my boulevard, Cimiez Nice, two squadrons of cavalry and numerous infantry were called out to aid the police at 4 a.m. in beating back the crowds who were “manifesting” against the expulsion of the Franciscans. At Marseilles, Avignon, etc., the main streets had to be barricaded, and cavalry charged the crowds, wounding great numbers. Of course all these grand manifestations of popular indignation are carefully belittled or suppressed by foreign correspondents of English and American papers. In the _Evening Post_, August 25th, M. Othon Guerlac, with lofty affectation of impartiality, echoes all the commonplaces of ministerial calumnies against the Congregations, but he has not one word to say about the monstrous illegalities committed by the Government from first to last. The indignant protestations of the foreign colony have suspended for a time the closing of churches and convents on this Riviera. The Ministerials have not even the courage to do evil logically and consistently, with equal injustice to all. Two years ago Waldeck Rousseau, in his famous political speech at Toulouse, declared religious vows to be contrary to public law; and in the same breath he introduced the law of 1901, inviting all Congregations to apply for authorization. His colleague, M. Brisson, at the session in which fifty-four Congregations of men were executed _in globo_, loftily declared “that the Republic would never put its signature to an act alienating human liberty.” And at that very moment, three or four of these Congregations were nestling, securely, under the protecting wing of M. Combes. That of St. Jean de Dieu has a first-rate establishment for men in need of surgical treatment, similar to the one conducted by Augustine nuns, at which Madame Waldeck Rousseau was operated on recently. None of these will be interfered with, no matter how heinous their vows may be. It would be foolish, I repeat, for Catholics to rejoice at the possible return of Waldeck Rousseau, or at any _machine en arrière_ policy.