To What Strange Uses.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 4995, 15 January 1885, Page 3

To What Strange Uses.

- A strange eventful history is thus chronicled in!the columns of the Australasian by 'that ■versatile' writer Mg\es : — "T lately told a story of an sesthetie sexton, whose chattels, when sold off, included hothouse; plants and works of art. I have lately received a letter from this gentleman confirming what I said as " true to the core." From his communicatiou, which bears the appearance of truth, can be gathered particulars of a life of strange vicissitudes. Mr. John Soult Forlescue Le Clerc has, in thi* country, been schoolmaster, selector, woodcutter, and gravedigger. Mr Le Clerc says be is the grandton on the maternal side of an English nobleman, that be is a nephew of the great Marshal Soult, and that three of bis father's brothers fell at Waterloo. Educated at the Ecole Polytecbnque, he was Second in command of the Swiss Guard in Paris in 1848, when he received honourable wounds. The Duchess of Orleans, Cpmte de "Taris, and Due de Cbarires were placed under his protection, and he saw them safely to Fewhaven. His first wife, niece of Sir John Pirie, was killed by a shot at the Tuilleries, and lies as an " unknown dead" beneath the monument to the slain of 1848. M. Le Clerc says he accompanied Marshall Soult as his A.D.C. to the Queen's Coronation, and that the day •fter (moved, perhaps, by the festivities described by Barney Brallaghan) took a pledge of total abstinence —since strictly maintained. The loss cf his picture of Waterloo he deeply deplores, as it showed "not only the final charge of, the Old Guard, commanded by a noble relative, but the British square containing the 20th ■Regiment, in which my present wife's father, was serving.". Surely this is a strange, eventful history. From the tenor of the old gentleman's letter, I fear that towards the close of a long life he is in poor circumstances."