PARIS.

Southland Times, Issue 1601, 5 July 1872, Page 3

PARIS.

(fhom ofb owb cobbespondent.) May 1. It is gratifying to note the increasing calming down of political passions. The legitimists of royalty are parting with their illusions, and the legitimists of radicalism are forgetting their Utopias and acerbity. There is a party springing up at once very liberal and conservative. It is here where M. Thiers evidently intends to find his Grande Armee. The monarchal journals have even ceased to pour out the vials of their wrath on the President. Their culminating charge against M. Thiers was that he was like Cffisar, ambitious. Beyond the ambition to snatch a fearful joy in a successful speech or a strong division, no other aims for the purple can be found. He is as obstinate as ever in favor of protection, and by his non possumus attitude on that question is wearying out the free-traders. After vowing he will ne'er consent, he will, consent on this subject, aye, and on compulsory service in the army and attendance at school also, for his young countrymen. The Eight, in presence of the declared desire of the nation for a moderate republic, no longer make rabid assaults on the Left, and the latter has become quite ministerial. Gambetta deserves every credit for the manner he leads his friends ; like him, they observe a silent, an expectant attitude. The monarchists are very unjust to G-ambetta, they forget that when all seemed to despair of France, he alone never faltered in courage nor in hope. He rekindled the pride and spirit of his countrymen, and his fault was to love on to the close — to hope even against hope. But in all his errors, h© has created in reflective minds the impression that were his country's resources disciplined, and time allowed for a fair start, Germany would not have i had so easy a walk over the course. He made a mistake in believing he could direct a campaign as he can plead a brief, but we must not forget Moreau commenced life as a lawyer. The future has many chances for Gambetta, and he haa the consolation of witnessing that France treats all royal and imperial pretenders with a commonjand impartial indifference. Indeed the prospect of any restoration is no longer seriously discussed. The world desires no dynastic politics, but wishes for that tranquility which will enable the French to turn their intuitive intelligence to matters that will ameliorate the material wellbeing of mankind. It is very singular, and even humorous, the frank way with which the French expose their shortcomings, and the wit and fun they manufacture out of their disasters. Like other nations they consider this role as a peculiarly family matter. They will growl if a foreigner intrudes, but if a German intermeddles he will be considered guilty of a gross impertinence, and an extra knot put in the " cat" to chastise him some half-dozen or dozen years hence, when the present Czar shall

have been gathered to his fathers, and Bismarck's dust become about as valuable as Alexander's, as alluded to by Shakespeare. It is something in the old Gallic vein that the flight of the Abbe Junqua for free Brussels is alluded to. By so doing he haß saved the Government from locking him in prison for six months, and sending his cassock to a museum. Will he remain where he is ? He is about 40 years of age, tall, but not prepossessing. His strongly-marked southern accent is much against him, and he has a weakness for persoual diatribes. As Pope Pio Nono, like every personage, is open to fair criticism, but the individual should be respected, and above all, when that individual is most exemplary and irreproachable — as is the Sovereign Pontiff's case. There is less out-crying against the Bishops for their violation or evasion of t the organic laws of the concordat, but the j liberal journals are making common cause with the radical press to annul the concordat, and allow everyone to pay for their own pater nosier. When Napoleon I. re-established religion, society was not the less his debtor though he thus avowed his motive — " When I protect the priests, when I nourish them, the clergy will do what I wish for the general interest ; they will calm excited spirits, hold them in their hands, and place them between mine." France will not have the roles inserted. Paris since some years has been infested with the German rat, against which there is not so much opposition, in consequence of the inestimable services it rendered to the " food supplies " of the city during the 1870 siege ; the Cossacks in 1814-15 infected Paris with Don fleas which have increased and multiplied ever since, despite all the efforts of the " bug men," and their insect annihilators. It was Vaterland afflicted our pigs with the trichina and our cattle wth the rinderpest, nothing more natural than that the popular mind should dub as " Prussian flies," those swarms of black ants that have taken possession of the capital of the universe. These insects are also called mouches de mart — and " death flies" they are in appearance. Their jet black, coffin-like shape, is full of sepulchral suggestions and grave-yard habitats. They ought to confine their visits to undertakers' shops, not private houses. Instead of clinging in fives on the clothes of respectable citizens, their natural rendezvous should be the glazed hats of the croque mort where they would constitute becoming funereal emblems. The people detect in these insects several Prussian characteristics ; they are invaders to commence with ; are ungainly and awkward ; have chased away the common house-fly, to the detriment of the apothecaries who sold the bibulous pnpier a mourir ; they have white wings and black legs, like the color of a Uhlan's pennant ; and finally, there is no getting rid of them. Everybody is a franc-tireur towards them in self-defence, but no massacre reduces the hordes. They are said to come from the East — Egypt, " NovaZembla or the Lord knows where." If the khedive has a hand in the matter, he need never attempt negotiating any future loans in Paris. Having an entomological friend connected with the Museum of Natural History at the Jardin des Plantes, I paid him a visit with the view of knowing what he had to say on the " fly-question." He was full of the subject, and it was a gratifying spectacle to witness several of the common foe pinned down on sheets of paper, with a pile of disjecta membra consisting of legs, proboscis and antennae ; microsopes were in full operation, which fully revealed the hideousness and the disgust extended to these insects. Every part of their body is surrounded with a chevaux de frise of long, black hairs, covered with black globules, which are the eggs of an acarus, and that develope into a parasite. " So, naturalists observe a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey ; And these hare smaller still to bite 'em ; And so proceed ad infinitum." They have no connection with putrifying matters, which is no small redeeming feature ; under a glass cylinder was a battalion of the " black Brunswickers," enjoying their dejeuner of glutinous buds, and not one approached the tiny fresh beef steaks or the putrid mutton chop — they are decidedly vegetarians. Their weakness, or helplessness in flying, is to be traced to premature confinement on the part of the mother, brought about by a precocious spring ; they are not such strangers as might appear, and are " racy of the soil," but their prevalence now is to be attributed to the absence this spring of ichneumons, which by feeding on them when in a state of larvae, kept them in check." Being on the spot, I paid my respects to the" dying hippopotamus." He appeared ,in excellent health, and seemed in want of nothing but fresh water in his bath. I was, however, informed it was by " mixing medicines in the bath" that the doctors were operating his perfect cure. The bystanders contributed a few pills .in the way of oranges, rolls of bread, and such simples. Judging by the time he left open his " ponderous jaws" to receive the smallest contribution, there ought to be no difficulty in dosing him with anything, bottles included. Indeed the veterinary surgeon might promenade inside him, if guaranteed a Jonah's exit. The two elephants, Romeo and Juliet, have had to be separated on account of more than a lover's quarrel. They are splendid animals. Romeo so far does the " balcony scene" as to step up on a few bars of the enclosure to receive a cake. j In the immediate neighborhood is Ivry ; crossing a wild, neglected piece of ground — the " turnip field" as it has been named — is reached. It is here the unclaimed remains of idiots, lunatics, and the unknown from the Morgue are buried. In an out-of-the-way corner of this sad place are interred the guillotined. On Orsini's grave was a withered bouquet of flowers ; Troppman's was marked by a black stick. The guardian asserts he

did receive official orders, countersigned by Felix Pyat, to prepare a " fresh hole" for Troppman, and keep his grave open for the ashes of Napoleon I. Leaving this singular " God's acre," I passed to the parish churchyard to see the temporary resting-place of the Countess Dubourg, whose adultery, and assassination for same by her husband last week, still continues a prominent topic of conversation. The grave-digger kuew nothing, except it was rumored the body of a grande dame lay beneath a fresh mound, pointing to one surmounted by a black cross. The Dubourg drama occupies more attention than any other subject. Comte Dubourgis about thirty years of age, father of an infant 18 months old — his wife is 23. It is said he was equerry to the exemperor, and ever delivered homilies to his wife on conjugal fidelity. Madame, since six months, had met with the Count Precorbin, a clerk in the Hotel de Ville, and formerly a lover. They had several meetings in a garret, rented by a felloe clerk, situated in the rue des Ecoles — the student's quarter of Paris, where free love between young men and their grissette* is accepted as an institution. The Count traced his wife to the garret, and on forcing open the door found her undressed* Lothario had escaped by the window totbe roof. Maddened at the degrading spectacle of his young and beautiful wife,, and not finding her paramour, he inflicted seven wounds with a cane a word ; he was also armed with a poignard and a revolver. After stabbing his wife he drove to find apriest and a doctor, who at once arrived. Later in the evening, he surrendered himself to the police in a terrible state of dejection ; judging, however, from the sumptuous dinner he subsequently enjoyed, hia grief must have found relief.. The poor woman, recovering from a swoon, crawled to the window, called for aid, and. was afterwards transported to the hospital,, where it is said she is dead. Her anxiety was to save her lover when discovered ; she pardoned her husband, and acknowledged the justice of his punishment. The husband has been released, hia father and wife's brother being his sureties — not that the law reserves any terrors for him. The paramour, aged 25,, on his mother's solicitations, has surrendered to the authorities, the mother conducting him before the magistrate. He has also been dismissed from his situation on the ground "of being absent without leave." It is an error to suppose thatthe Code cannot reach him unlea* the husband, who refuses to do so, prosecutes. He can be tried for debauching a married woman. The respectability of the parties has raised the tragedy to an. important event. As the wife was being conveyed to the hospital, the husband encountered the sad procession as he was being led to the scene of the crime. The crowds still gather in front of the house, not only to discuss the punishment, but to view the perilous swing from the window to the roof that Don Juan effected. The leading acrobats admit they could not equal it. Count Precorbin is execrated for deserting the woman he dishonored at such a moment. Brantome relates the story of a faithless wife, who showed her lover the door because he grew pale and trembled at the approach of her husband, when he ought to have been prepared for danger. Dumas fits has in the Count Precorbin's flight a new idea for his next drama of adultery — for the " Visite de Noce" and the " Princess Georges" have no denouement. By a strange coincidence, the priest who administered the last rites to the woman taken in adultery was M. Amant (lover), and the Commissary of Police who arrested the husband was M. Compere (accomplice).