A. VICTIM OF THE " MONOMANIA OF PHILANTHROPY"

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1749, 25 January 1888, Page 4

A. VICTIM OF THE " MONOMANIA OF PHILANTHROPY"

The Paris correspondent of the "Mornfog Advert lier " lays :— A somewhat rare variety of mental disease — the mommania.. of philanthropy— has ended m th»t 'gaioßt which tbe everlasting haa fixed his canon ; j a scrap of paper left by the deceased ex- ' plaining that he found '• this life trop bite." The victim w»s a young ta*o n#mad Eu.ene Orbeochi. He had drift-d into the fixed idea that his express miailon here below was to reclum fa'lea women, and be had yielded likewise to the hallucination that the objects of hi* humanitarian ganeroMty would, bh a matter of course, be all dying to quit their ways. D alltasion dogs/pd his foot steps. At length he «noountered one Msrgaerlts Matbn, who made him promlseß and acted repentance. He lodged her m a furnished apartment, and undertook to provide her with a dowry If »he would espouse an honest artisan Margoerlta Mathis pat the money of this lon nai/ into her pocket, and augmented tbe number of her masculine acqmintances. One-day Orbecohi dfce-ivered the perfijy of the female whom he im»glned ho was reclaiming, and In an «»xcasa of nn governrble raga drew a knife and Btrack her with it. At the sii f z3 court the jury acquUted him. T*o d*ya affcer the acquittal of Orbecchi, his couneel received the following note from him :—"On rcy way from tbe Oonoierperie prison, the day before yesterday, I met Mirguerite Mathis. . Bhe was with a pair cf the wretches whom aha continues to frequeut. I see now that she ii a lost soul. The last aim of my Ufa had been to bevj her: I give it up. . There is nothing more for me to do m this world. Mere existence Is a burden to me. Ynu will read m the newspaper to-morrow, mon cher defenseur, that a youag engineer named Jmes J)uval has committed suioide by taking chlcroform. That will be myself 1 *ra now looking for an hotel where I o*n die quietly. When you have read the acciunt of my aaiofde, please bo kir.d enongh t > tske the m-asuresifqirdite for preventing me, m cisc I should fail fro a beln^ buried alive." OrbeccH had solocfod an hotel m tie c! 6 IJer k ere, snd, having entered the above description of himsell m the bto'i kept for the police, he wrote that "life was trop bite;' an 1 poleoned lmnself w.th chloroform. Ha was i ;tt rrr d 1 1 the following c'tj at the P*ntin eeraeterj m the name of Duval. S nee then the letter has been published by his couneel ; and the true Istory, simple, ' brief, and human, is perhaps not inferior m pathos to an entire three-volume novel, although the writer mny be quite an eminent modern psychological rjmanoia\