OUR PARIS LETTER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 464, 4 January 1881, Page 3

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(From 1 our own Correspondent.)

Paris, Nov. 4.

The journals that ex-Wiir Minister General de' Giesey has sued for defamation of character;'do not the less attack "him violently ; they cannot wait for a < few "days till justice, lame though it is said to be, has pronounced. The "Baroness" de Kanla, the General's fair Rosamond, weeps like Niobe ; she waives to take an action against her separated husband who denounced her as a Prussian spy—she was a constant guest at the French war-office, and a welcome one at the German embassy, because the law requires she must first oblain that husband's consent. ;,;; The Rev. MTLoyson denies that he

/is about converting his church, 1,600 a joint stock company; he peeks another building, in a thoroughfare where his place of worship would be visible and more accessible; ho says where ho officiates at present there are ghopkeepers within a tew yards wholly ignorant they reside close to a church. He announces that he wishes to serve God, withont believing either in Papal infallibility, or turning Protestant, and. he asserts there are millions of Catholics in France who think as he does—as old as the ancient Gauls.

Sardon's play of " Daniel Rochat" created an uproar at the Theatre Fran Kqis because it attacked Freethinkers, I gather perhaps civil marriage. A lislikefor theology on the stags has iifluenccd the manager to decline M. [)emiWde's five act drama, " The Moabite " founded on incidents occurring during the, reign of one of the JMd(J£ijyi - Israel. The piejg. aiffiS i-o prove tb?, r*liff'sss oe«er%is necessary to man: '. tliafthis belief Weakened or destroyed, man becomes only governed by his passions ar/d sinks from' abyss to abyss, . where neither the light of heaven can

r -.'.;ich hi ii, nor~tTie~-yyice of a cons be heard. The drama T\as : justjjeen read : -it a literary soiree given Adam. It is a beautiful play and full of sensational interest"; the verse is. tryin" hut the chief defect of the piece is its' length. Offenbach* " Belfr Lurette," comic opera., in three acts, is a •success ; this posthumous score has al'. ihe vivacity and nvdody of the composer's best productions f there are half-a-dozen morceaux that take possession of your ears, and also of your feet. The plot is this—Duke Marly is ordered by an old aunt to marry a certain lady ; instead.he weds a laundress, and sends her to the dowager, who begs her to return to the tub, but the laundress has twice saved* the duke's life, and he acknowledges her socially as his spouse. ■Zola publishes a furious attack against Victor Hugd forhis " latestbalderdash " « the ass Who delivers a soliloquy of verses of stupefying commonplaces,where not a single new idea is to be met with."Tlie poet and his phenomenal quadruped are well matched, according to the critic. The poem is " colossal emptiness," and Zola is prepared to svager his head that no rational being.has ever waded through the production. A journal demands that cremations only be tolerated on Ash Wednesdays. A widower objected to buy a' funeral wreath with the motto—" Eternal Regrets," he did so for his first wife, and itmade his second jealous. Not a dozen wreaths "to my mother-in-law," are sold in ten years in Paris. A man advertises .'for a wife and adds "no enquiry will be made as to her antecedents. A marriage is announced between a wine-shop - keeper, M. Riviere (niev), and a dairy-woman, Mile Fontaine.