MISCELLANEOUS.

Grey River Argus, Volume IV, Issue 258, 7 September 1867, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

At the" roj'al palace at Berlin 40,000 •wax candles are instantaneously lighted '•by one match. The wicks are spun out of gun-cotton, on lighting one end of which all the candles are lighted simultaneously and thus the whole of the 700 appartments are illuminated at once. In Russia the same ingenious method is employed for lighting up churches on grand .occasions. The Count di Castiglione, private secretary and chef dv cabinet of King Victor Emmanuel, died suddenly a few nights ago, as he was escorting the newly-married Duke and Duchess of Aosta (Prince and Princess Amadeiis of Italy) to Stupinigi, '^ .a country seat of the King's near Turin. The'Gount was riding a little in advance of a mounted party who were accompanying the cortege. He was suddenly seen .to drop his reins and fall to the ground, and when lifted up by some bystanders he was found to be quite dead. It is .•stated that he had lately had apopletic warnings, although he had scarcely arjrived at middle ago. The Count was the ihusband of the, brilliant and beautiful ■ "''' Countess- di Castiglione, who -used to be : ,one of the attractions of the French Court Iflome two years back, and whose appear■"^nce at a fancy ball in the singular and scanty costume of Flaubert's Carthagenian •■ heroinej Salammbo, is not yet quite forgotten. The Count and Countess di Casiiglione had been for some years separated. A dreadful murder and suicide have taken place at Bordeaux. The victim, Mdme. Capelain, the proprietress of the Hotel dv Havre, was about 50 years of age. The perpetrator was a workman of about. 3o, who had. lived at the hotel for some time, but had left a few days previously, owing Mdme. Capelain 20fr. How or when he had introduced himself £nto the house is not known ; and what is strange is, that the room in which the landlady slept was only separated by a thin partition from another occupied by two travellers, and yet they heard nothing of the .terrible struggle which had evidently taken place, the whole room being in disorder and flooded with blood — the woman's throat having been cut with a razor — and a square of glass broken. Mdme. Capelain managed to drag herself to the door of another room which was occupied, and gave an alarm. Every attention was at once paid to the unfortunate woman, but she expired shortly after. The murderer tie a seems to have got alarmed, and to have fled to an inner (courtyard, where he hanged himself to a bar of iron, to which he was found suspended in the morning, having on him a bunch of keys and other things which he had taken from his victim.