A JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1652, 20 January 1913, Page 4

A JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.

TWO MOTHERS: ONE CHILD, AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE. Tho story begins five years ago in Brussels, where a sempstress stitched to earn bread for herself and her new-born child (writes tho Paris correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" on December i). Tho struggle was bitter, and sio lost heart. Seeing a notice in the' newspaper ''f an "elderly lady" who sought to adopt a child, tho little sempstress parted with her infant. •

At tho same time thero was a baker's wife, who lived in straitened circumstances, hardly able to buy the material to lxlke her bread. She, too, sent her child to the elderly, lady. Alas for the best of all possiblo Worlds! Tho "elderly lad}'" was a monster; The children she adopted were a thousand times moro unhappy than ever they wero in the poorest home, in which they had eaten the bread of affliction. Tho "elderly lady," and for that matter her husband, too, beat her charges unmercifully, made them sleep on tho floor uncovered, and subjected, them to a hundred brutalities. She took no money, you understand, from those who sent the children. They were, it seemed, a kind of channel through which her. cruelty could' pass. She wreaked an inhuman hate upon tho helpless. For live years tho "elderly lady" filled tho cup of her child victims' bitterness, and then the law heard their cry: She was sentenced to thirteen liionths' imprisonment, and. her husband to two years';. -Photographs of her appeared in all _the, newspapers; of her and of'her, victims.' The littlo sempstress and • the little boulangcre, taking.up their journals one day, read the whole story of tho'persecution, read, also, that the child whoso portrait they saw in the page before them had been handed over to the poor law, as an infant of whose mother no trace could be found. For the elderly lady and her husband, in common with the "highly respectable gondolier" of whose "terrible taste for tippling" Sir W. G. Gilbert wrote, could equally "never- , de j clare with a mind sincere" where any of the babes they reared camo from. In the Other cases tho children had; been claimed, but this one child was left over.

You foresee tho difficulty—two mothers and one child.And just as it happened long ago in the story, so it' happened in life the other day; in life in tho twentieth century—both mothers Claimed the child. In each case it had been sent from Brussels about the samo time, and in each ease, the mother was; now moro ablo to feed it Arid to fend for it than nt tho'.timo it chose to enter tho world. And' tho law found itself face to'face with tho samo dileilima as Solomon, and in theso days it cannot even.be suggested that tlio sword of justice-cannot be drawn which .that Royal psychologist found so efficacious." Madame Mareclial continued positivo anjl/daniant. The child was hers. Nothing could shake tho belief of Madame Gilbert. It was her child. Both counsel wero equally eloquent and convincing. In a vague-way one wonders- whether it might not have been left to the child, but if this suggestion was made it must have found favour with neither mother, and been frowned upon by tho Bench.' ; Still, with both mothers beating upon the gates of tho "assistance publique," something had to bo done. ■ , v >

Then Maitre Tathouot, who appeared for Mndamo Mareclial', had an inspiration. Why not call ' in M. Ilertillon ? '■; ■ The finger-prints of tho fathers are reproduced with extraordinary fidelity in the children, and already it seems M.- Bertillon has thus proved that "the mother is of kin to her child." The Bench received tho suggestion with becoming gravity. But. it is naturally in tho' circumstances. chary of confiding the luckless victim to a. possible' stepmother, for M.,;Bcrtillon, if,.be decides' at' all, may ;in perfcctigood faith decido wrongly. So tho tribunal intimated that it would, t'ako time to reflect, .and we shall have to wait.for,the next, . j?eanwhilo: ono wonders' whether- the mothors to whom tho children have been restored are their mothers after all. , As there is no mention of any of tho elderly lady's victims having succumbed to their treatment, it is clear ,that there is a child too few. Consequently, there is a mother, too many. Who has the child that is iiladnme Marechal's—or Madame . Gilbert's? Will she come forward now to restore it to its rightful'mother, whefeyer she may be? And will Madame Gilbert or. Madame Marechal .admit maternity in regard to it? Thnt ATOtild ; bo ft dramotists way out of the situation,-but life.arranges its scenes in;its.o.wn'way.