A SAD HISTORY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1136, 7 February 1884, Page 1

A SAD HISTORY.

Amicie Genuit, the Pansian, who shot a man wh m she mistook for her villainous husband, has been acquitted. Her history is a svd one. Were t'ie law more fl xibfe in dealing out penalties for offences commuted under the influence of exasperating circumstances, she might have been found guilty. Amicie Genuit was a flenriste that is to say, a maker of artificial (lowers. A clerk having an income of about £2OO a year, seduced her. When she was the mother of two children, and at the head of a business whi' h she -created.’' and worth £4OO, he married her to legitimise h r offspring and enjoy the fruits of tier intelligence and energy as a tradeswoman. He quarrelled with her. She found that her money went to other women whom he fancied. The pair agreed to separate after the business was ruined. Genuit stipulated to pay his wife a monthly allowance for the support of the children, but as he failed to do so she was obliged to send the little unfortunates to stay with him. He then came and took away all her furniture, which she had bought with her own money. He even bore away the cradle of her youngest child, which he said he wanted for his concubine who expected shortly to lie in. The deserted wife took steps to obtain a decree of separation on the plea of adultery, but she was beaten on a technical objection. The husband’s domicile is in French law the wife’s •, Iso, and a man is not adowed to keep a mistress in the conjugal abode. But the lodging to which he took the furniture was lured in the name of the mistress. It therefore did not come within the reach of the cc.de. The wife’s suit was dismissed. She then demanded a separation on the ground of cruelly. It was granted, and she was named the guardian of the children ; but when she went with ? police commission ary to fetch them from a baby-farming establishment she discovered that one had been sent off to the country —nobody knew where—and the outer placed in the Foundling Hospital, from which it was impossible ti withdraw it before it had attained its thirteenth year. On learning this she • aid she mentally condemned the scoundrel to death. Butin watching for him in (he dusk in the Rue de Hauteville she took another man f.ir him, fired at him, and shot him. It hrppened that he was a most worthy person. The odious husband appeared before the Assize Court in a defiant rig-out. His hair was postered with pomatum, ids monsiacha was waxed, his heard cut in Henri IY. sfvle, and his handkerc 1 ief scen’ed wi'h opoponax. Ho looked through an eyeclass ac the prisoner in the dock, and gave •ds evidence smiling. It was impossible for the presiding jn Ige to keep down iha manifestations of disgust from bar, witness and public. A saying of the wfe was very characteristic of an honest French workwoman. It was man who dernends public alms f< r his child unless ivduc d to the last extremity bv ciicumstances over which he has no conlro], deserves to be stoned.” She said tic t she had courage enough to start afresh in business until she knew that one of her unfortunate babes' was in the Foundling Hospital, hut that all l»r strength left ber when slie heard of the cm 1 fate to which its unnatural parent had doomed it.