A STRANGE STORY.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 575, 23 September 1869, Page 4

A STRANGE STORY.

The Florence correspondent of the Times, writing on May 19, says :-?=-" A trial that has Just been held before the Correptional Tribune of Milan has excited strong interest by the dramatic circumstances disclosed, and at the same timo gives a strange idea of the degree to which individual liberty may be violated in Italy. A marripd woman, twenty- five years of age, bearing the ra.ther remarkr able name of Caroline of Aragon, and whose husband had abandoned her, became enamoured of an Englishman named Edmund Howard, who lived in Milan, and gaye lessons j.n English. His position in the Lombard capital sepms to have been good, but he abandoned it for her sake, and they travelled together, and early in the present year were at Venice,. While there, her family, which for five years had taken no notice of her, suddenly applied to the Milan police to have her brought back to her father's house. She was arrested, taken to Milan, and placed as a prisoner in her father's hands. As was shown by a note she wrote to Howard, and which wsis read in Court, she was completely deprived of her personal liberty and prevented from going out. Howard thereupon applied to the King's Procurator, who summoned the D'Aragouas, father and daughter, to appear before him at noon on the 11th February. It was the wedding day of one of her brothers. By signs from her window she contrived to inform Howard that she was going out at noon, and when at that hour she and her father got into a carriage he appeared at the door, touched her on the arm, and asked her where she was going. The details of the tragical scene that ensued are well given in a letter' written by her to Howard's advocate, and by him laid before the tribunal. Whatever her frailties, Caroline of Aragon is evidently a clever and courageous woman. Her attachment to Howard, she declares, originated in her appreciation of his remarkable talents and cultivated mind, and was confirmed and strengthened by the many sacrifices he made for her. They had much to struggle with and much to endure, but still they lived happily together until her arrest at Venice. She writes: — "I was cast into prison like a malefactor, without kuowing for what reason. In these painful circumstances I had fresh proofs of Howard's attachment in the extraordinary efforts he made for my release. But the order was irrevocable. I was forced to set out the next morning, escorted by a functionary who made me over to the Milan police, who, apparently not knowing what to do with me, sent me from one place to another, and finally to San Vittore, accompanied by two policemen in plain clothes, and thence, on the following day, I was made over to my family. I will not dwell upon the mental anguish occasionad* me by such treatment. To this hour lam unable to comprehend by what right and in virtue of what law the police interfered in the affair, since it was not a case of restoring some runaway minor to her family, I being of age and a married woman, and five years absent from my father's house.' She states that she was locked up in a room and allowed to see no one. Unfortunately, Howard misinterpreted the signal made from her window, and instead of understanding that at twelve the next day she was to be taken before the Royal Procurator, he thought she proposed that he should meet her at the house door, to take her away from Milan. Staggered at seeing her accompanied by her father he stood at the carriage window, and in reply to his inquiry she told him where she was going to be taken. A horrible scene ensued, which ahe thus vividly describes : — 'The words were hardly spoken when my brother Luigi and his father-in-law fell upon him, seized him furiously by the beard, and dragged him back under the gateway of the house. Then he was assailed by a crowd of bystanders, and a tremendous struggle began. Howard, seeing himself overwhelmed with insults and by a number of his adversaries, drew a six-barrelled revolver from his pocket, and warned his assailants to stand back or he would fire upon them. Seeing that the warning was fruitless, he fired three or four shots, in the air, as I myself saw, with no other object, I am profoundly convinced, than to clear a space around him and so rejoin me All this was the work of a moment. As if with a presentiment of what was about to happen I jumped out of the carriage, and hastened to join him, but, alas ! too late, for he already lay upon the ground, bathed in his own blood. Stooping over him, and just as he had spoken the woras, l Je menrs pour toi et je t'aime,' a kick given, I cannot say by whom, forced his eye out of the socket, and it fell down over his cheek. I remained as one putrefied. My hand clasped in his, I swore in my heart to revenge his death, when I was dragged away by main force, aud so sudden and violei t was the impetus that the poor victim was dragged with mo for some distance over the stones. Covered with blood and almost frantic, I was forced again into the carriage and carried before the Royal Procurator, to whom those fresh blood-stains attested the deplorable fact that had just occurred.' It appears that when Howard fired his revolver in the air, one of the D'Aragonas, either from fright or in trying to get away, slipped and fell. Howard thought he had killed him, and, seized with despair, put his pistol to his head and shot himself. He appeared in court with a black bandage round his head, having lost his right eye. The papers describe him as a man of six juid thirty, gentlemanly appearance. When Caroline d'Ayrgona came into court to give evidence, he advanced to meet her, and they clasped hands with great emotion. The tribunal acquitted him on the charge of firing with malicious intent ; he was fined 50f. for carrying the revolver, and immediately released.'