A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1292, 19 July 1886, Page 3

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

An extraordinary experience ia reported aa follows by the Paris corre-pondent of the Daily JVeut* ; —“Jean Mistral at length after forty-seven yeara of imprisonment ia a madhouse is at liberty, and master of sixty-five millions of francs, which represent his inherited fortune and accumulated compound interest He n>w wants to find oat what became of Ivs wife, who, because she refused in return for an annuity of 500 francs a year to ackn >wk-dge herself a woman of improper character, was turned out of Frauce £on a charge of vagabondage. This was in 1837, when railways did not exist here. She was placed under police escort and marched from gendarmerie to gendarmerie all the way to the Rhine opposite Kehl, where she was put into a ferry and sent across. Mistral ia a first cousin of the poet. His mad house experiences at different times were more dreadful than those which befel a leading character in one of Charles Reade’s novels. He did net believe that he was going to be taken before a tribunal to plead his own case until he was actually there, when he burst into tears, and was too much affected f >r a cons derable time to speak, but on being gently re-assured bv the piesident, he told his story in a trembling voice, but in a perfectly lucid manner, and answered a number of test questions put to him. Only one parson in Taraacon, Ira native town, whom he knew before he was incarcerated, is now alive The story of Mistral is aa follows : He was sent on leaving college to act aa a travelling agent to hi* father, who was a rich manufacturer. There he fell ia love with a Polish operat e singer named Dombrowska, whom he married at Posen. He wro e to hia father apprising him of his intention, and received an answer to the effect that the paternal consent which French law demands would be given if there was fortune, but not unless. Jean Mistral’s supplies were stopped when he apprised his parents of his marriaga, and he snd his wife lived on the proceeds of her lyrical engagements. Her voice after they came to France failed her. They got as well as they could to Tarasccn, where the door of the paternal house was abut in their faces. He acd she then went about the country as wandering musicians. Measures were taken by the father to set aside the marriage, but aa the son refused to benefit >y them there were many hitches. At last tbe poor wife consented to temporary separation. It was when ho was away from hsr that he was arrested as a furious lunatic, and taken to the madhouse, wheie be has been 47 years. It w?b not until Voltaire |took the matter up three years ago that the

Admlnistrat'on could he got to stir in tho affair. The noiae caused by the Mistral case will probably lead to a repeal of the Innaey law of 1838 which for family rea-

sons Louis Phillippe caused to be hurried through the Chamber.”