Inasmuch as the church chairs are rented to families and paid for yearly or half-yearly, this evil is less glaring in the provinces. The wealthier parishioners there usually try to secure places in front, often at high rents, which renders it possible to let the remainder more cheaply, sometimes at mere nominal prices, to the poorer classes.
What we have stated above applies, in many respects, equally to the larger provincial cities, among which Lyons, Marseilles, Nantes, and Toulouse deserve special mention for their religious zeal. Nor are Rouen, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Lille, and Metz indifferent to the success of the church. The other large and small cities may be judged according to the state of their respective provinces. One thing may, however, be safely depended upon, namely, that every city contains a circle of laymen which sets a praiseworthy example in religious conduct and social Christian deportment. The women cling, nearly everywhere, with deeper devotion to the church than the men, and in the provinces even more than in Paris. The most devout of spirit are the German provinces, Alsace, Lothringen, and Flanders, as well as Brittany, Auvergne, Limouisin, Dauphiné, and the provinces south and west, where most if not all the adults fulfil the precept of Easter communion. Least devout are perhaps the provinces in the vicinity of Paris, Normandy, Champagne, Picardie, Orleans, down into the very heart of France, as far as Tours and Bourges. Within a radius of about sixty miles from Paris, the condition of the villages is truly deplorable, and in the towns, the religious sentiment is only very slowly awakened. There are localities where Sunday is even more habitually disregarded than at the capital; and if the men go occasionally to church, they rarely partake of the Holy Sacrament. This state of things is, however, an exceptional one, and especially in the villages near Paris which send their vegetables, flowers, fruits, and other produce to market. The daily contact of the peasantry with metropolitan life has had a bad effect on their morals. At these points the church is chiefly attended by Parisians who spend a portion of the year at their villas.