HORRIBLE STORY FROM PARIS.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 380, 31 August 1875, Page 4

HORRIBLE STORY FROM PARIS.

{From the Eelw.) A story of horror comes from the neighbourhood of Paris, where there are certain leech ponds from which the Paris market is supplied. It is the hideous custom of the proprietors to tie living horses, too old for work, up to their girths in these pools, where the leeches immediately fasten on them, and in the course of a day or two suck their blood till they expire. The brutal people concerned in this inhuman business are, we are told, wont to speak jestingly of the appearance of the miserable horses with black vermin covering their limbs, "wearing the caleoon," (drawers). It seems that a man named Moulin, the owner of such a pond, had one little boy of seven years old, to whom lie was as much attached as such men can be to anything, and that he used to allow his child to play with a superannuated horse on his premises. Considering that his leeches wanted food, however, Moulin, took the horse, fastened him in the usual manner a few feet from the shore in the horrid pond, and went about his business, leaving the horse to be eaten up alivfc. When he returned home some hours afterware's, Moulin missed his boy, and, after looking for him in vain in various directions, suddenly bethought himself of the pond. There, indeed, he found the poor little child, who had gone to seek his old playfellow, and had waded into the pond, and then clung in desperation to the poor horse's neck. The animal, of course, being chained to his post, was unable to carry the boy to land, and the child's naked legs were assailed and covered by the bloodsuckers. When the father found his dying son, the child also, like the horse, "wore the calecort." Is there no tongue in France to read the dread moral of this horrible story? "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again."