Marshal MacMahon made his expected speech at Bourges on Friday
week, but it comes to very little. He declared that he wished to "maintain peace I" to "protect the men of order of all parties, not only against subversive passions, but against their own excesses," and to induce them to make common cause against the common peril, Radicalism ; he had never had any other in- tention, and the assertions that foreign relations were endangered, or that this was a Government of Curds, were all false. They would not discourage him from finishing his task, and he was sure that the nation would respond to his appeal, and put an end to a conflict the prolongation of which could only injure its best in- terests. The speech and the Marshal were alike received without enthusiasm, and eye-witnesses say that although the soldiers. cheered, the Marshal looked bitterly disappointed with the cold- ness of his reception. There is an idea afloat in Paris that the Marshal thinks he has been, to a certain extent, deceived by the Conservatives, and is separating himself from them, but there is nopublic fact to confirm this rumour.
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