MARRIAGE IN THE DEATH CHAMBER.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 604, 30 November 1869, Page 4

MARRIAGE IN THE DEATH CHAMBER.

Marriages in extremis are not unfrequent in France, and the plot of many novels turns upon them. The Paris correspondent of the Daily News gives the particulars of a case in which the validity of a union of the kind at the very last moment is the question awaiting the decision of the Civil Tribunal at Tonnerre. A few months ago the Procureur-Imperial of that town was roused up in the dead of night by a man on horseback, who said he had ridden at full speed from the country house of M. Humbert, who was at the point of death, desired to be married immediately and begged the Procureur to allow the civil officer to celebrate the marriage at his bedside without the usual formalities, The Procureur answered out of his window that he could not do what was asked at the mere instigation of a messenger whom he did not know, but that if a certificate were brought from the mayor of the village in which M. Humbert lived he would grant the dispensation. The messenger "spared not for spoiling of his horse," dashed back, woke up the mayor, returned to Tonnerre, and was so successfully active that before daybreak there were assembled in the death chamber a member of the Municipal Council, delegated by the mayor, to perform the civil marriage, the cure of the parish, and two witnesses. Kneeling down by the side of the bed, in an agony of grief and suspense, was a lady who for eighteen years had lived with M. Humbert (one of the wealthiest landholders in the neighborhood) as his mistress. A young girl, the issue of the irregular union, was also in the room, and the object of the marriage was to confer upon her the status of legitimacy, as the French, like the Scotch law, allows per subsequens matrinioninm. The marriage was gone through, and two hours afterwards the husband expired. He left behind him a fortune of 800,00Pf., every sou of which will go to the widow and daughter, if the marrige be held valid, as in all probability it will be. The disappoitite4"blood relations, who had taken it fop granted that the inheritance would come 'to them, have brought an action to have the marriage declared null and void. M. Allou, for them, argued that the marriage was bad, first, as clandestine ; and second, because M. Humbert was too near death at the time to be able to give a valid consent. M. Lachaud pleaded for the widow and child. The Court at once overruled the objection on the ground of clandestinity, holding that the dispensation of the Procureur-Imperial was sufficiet, but it reserved final judgment until after an inquiry as to whether at the moment of the marriage M. Humbert had sufficient consciousness to know what he was doing.