A STRANGE STORY.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2469, 6 March 1882, Page 4

A STRANGE STORY.

[The " Times."] Facts are sometimes as strange, if not stranger, than fijtion, and sensational situations are occasionally to be met with in real life, which would figuro well in the words of Ponson de Terrail, or writers of his olass. The Oivil Tribunal of Simbirsk, in Russia, was recently the soene of one of those dramitio inoidenls more often read of in novels than witnessed in a court of law. A case was being heard bofore the tribunal, the plaintiff being represented by a lawyer of considerable celebrity named Panine. The court was crowded, and counsel on either side were about to plead for their respective clients. Suddenly a person present rose to his feet, and pointing to Maitre Panine, dencunoed him as a dangerous criminal, whose traoes the police had been seeking for four years past without having succeeded in discovering hie whereabouts. "That advocate," oried the individual in question, " has no right to the name he bears, his real name being Schilling. He is a German. I recognise him perfectly, for we were formerly at college together, and I deolare he is the notorious Valet de Coear." The excitement and amazement suoh an unexpected revelation caused can be well imagined. The statement was at first believed to be utterly false, but on the denunciator persisting in his assertion, the President of the Tribunal, desirous of bringing a painful soene to a close, requested the advocate to explain himself. Naturally, he stoutly denied that he and the famous Valet de Cceur were one and the same person, his accuser as emphatically maintaining the truth of his story, to corroborate which he asked that certain persons whom he named, amongst others a photographer, might be sent for. This was done. Upon Maitro Panine being confronted with the latter, he suddenly grew deadly white, and fell baok fainting on his seat. When he reoovered consciousness ho confessed to being Valet de Cceur, who, for four years baok, had been the chief of a band of swindlers, robbers, poisoners, and bandits of the worst kind, whose audacity and cruelty had made them the terror of Mosoow and the environs. The rank and file of this association of ruffians had fallen into the hands of the police, but the commander-in-chief, the famous Valet de Cceur, and his associate, also a German, called Spier, has never been caught. Chance has at length thrown him into the hands of justioe, and tho respected, distinguished, eloquent Maitre Panine, is safely lodged in prison, where he will have leisure to reflect upon the vicissitudes of life.