One result of this weakness has been serious rioting in
Paris. The Anarchists do not like to see active " demonstra- tions " by anybody but themselves, and on Sunday they broke out to put an end, they said, "to the monopoly of the streets claimed by the officials." A mob, variously estimated at from two to five thousand, attacked the police in the Boulevard Voltaire, wounding them with knives, wrecked a wineshop or two, and finally menaced the churches of St. Joseph and St. Vincent de Paul. The latter was protected by cavalry, but the former was entered, and everything in it ruined ; the crucifixes being broken, the pictures of the Virgin cut to pieces, and the altar broken up. So fierce was the mob, and so hard had the police to fight, that three hundred and eighty persons, assailants and assailed, were sent to hospital, and most of their wounds were reported unusually serious. The apprehensions caused by the incident are, we think, for reasons given elsewhere, exaggerated ; but the riots show that the residuum in Paris is as ferocious as ever, and is still animated by an almost inexplicable loathing towards religion. The priests do not tax them now, or injure them in any way, but the ideas of God or worship excite them to fury. It is to be noted that this mob called itself Dreyfusard, and yelled loudly against Anti-Semites; a most unfortunate detail They probably know nothing either of the evidence or of the Jewish question, but they will be quoted as living proofs of what the friends of Dreyfus and of toleration really are.
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