A PATHETIC STORY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2628, 23 August 1881, Page 3

A PATHETIC STORY.

The “ Daily Telegraph ” says ; Perhaps the most pathetic episode of the recent catastrophe at Nice was that of which one Giovanni Betocchio, a master saddler of Turin, was the hero. This unfortunate man, having been summoned to Nice by some business engagement, took with him thither his only daughter, an intelligent child of seven, to whom he was passionately attached, and whose fondness for music prompted her to persuade her father to purchase seats in the doomed theatre for the performance which terminated so tragically. He secured, places in the front row of "the galicry, and was occupying them with his little girl when the alarm of lire rang through the house.. Snatching the child up in his arms, he endeavored, and successfully, to break through the panic stricken crowd to the gallery door ; but during the struggle his darling was torn from his grasp. By

an almost superhuman effort he contrived to reenter the gallery, by that time plunged in all but total darkness, and while groping about along the overthrown seats, caught hold of a little girl, iusensible from fright, whom he carried out into the street, fully believing her to be his own daughter. She proved however to be a strange child. Hastily setting her down upon the pavement, he desperately fought his way for the second time into the burning theatre, from which he never again emerged alive. His charred corpse was found, two days later, among the .ruins of the gallery stairs.