ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3732, 20 December 1927, Page 4

ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY.

WOMAN KILLED BY LOVER NURSE AND HER PATIENT,

There has been a tragic echo of the naturalist colony at Gourmettes, near Grasse, France, run by a German whose views of the simple life brought him into conflict with the local authorities. It is a colony of, more or less, sick people, who wear as little clothing as possible so that the curative rays of the sun can get to their bodies. The colony was a sanitorium, and one of the nurses attached to it was Mme. Vernet, a pretty woman, the daughter of a doctor and the wife of Mr. Horace Wilfrid Lord, an American writer, from whom she had been separated for a long time. A patient in the sanatorium was Wencelas Klupfeil, a dashing man, who was formerly a captain in the Tsar’s Imperial Guard and later a victim of the Russian Revolution.

The ex-captain suffered from lung trouble. He was poor, and existence was assured to him by financial assistance given by friends. Mme. Vernet nursed him and they fell in love with each other. Another romance in * the simple-life colony was born, and the couple had hopes of marriage.

Mme. Vernet could do other things besides nursing patients. She was an accomplished violinist, and ha 4 taken the first prize at the Austrian Conservatoire. She decided to leave the naturalist colony and to give violin lessons at Nice, and Klupfeil also obtained work in a photographic studio.

Then their romance was shattered. Klupfeil worked very irregularly and became more pr less dependent upon his financee. He was very keen to marry her, but she had learned to know him better, had noted his lazy habits, and was less enthusiastic to join her lot with his. When Mme. Vernet decided to take a flat the Russian got the idea into his head that she wanted to get rid of him. He was eating his heart out in a furnished room, finding it difficult to keep body and soul together and always suffering from his chest, while she was now comfortably installed. The Russian became a prey to sombre thoughts. He called upon his sweetheart early one morning, and a few minutes afterwards there was a crash of broken glass. Klupfeil was seen to leave a few minutes later. He was very calm. A visitor called, but was not admitted. The door was forced open and Mme. Vernet was found dead in her drawing room, her little dog guarding her body and barking furiously. There were wounds on her throat and arms, and a dagger in her heart. Within a few hours the Russian was arrested. This is not the only tragedy of passion that occurred at Nice in the same week. Emanuel Notaras, a Greek and an optician’s assistant, was engaged to be married to Helen Bini, a milliner. His lungs were m a bad state, and he had to enter a hospital. Wthen the girl made the discovery that his malady was incurable her affection cooled off. Ho took the decision that he would not give up the girl, and lie wrote to her parents, that if she abandoned him he would kill her.

The Greek had it out with his sweetheart. He told, her that the moment had come for her to die since she had decided not to man y him. Two shots rang out. Notaras had killed his fiancee and had aftrewards taken his own life. He left a letter addressed to the girl’s father, a letter of fervent passion, in which he declared that he could not live without her, and had determined that both of them should die.