THE MONTE CARLO CRIME.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8558, 18 October 1907, Page 3

THE MONTE CARLO CRIME.

MRS GOOLD'S STRANGE CAREER.

An interesting story of the career of Mrs Goold is told by tho Marseilles correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph. It has been often been said, he remarks, that the most adventurous careers are reserved for natives of Southern France, and Mrs Goold, being from "Midi," is no exception to the rule. Her native village, La Sone, u about six hours' ride from Marseilles .Jfcuid is perched up in the mountains ' of the Dauphine, in one of the most pcituresque regions in Southern France. The page on which the birth oi Marie Ross Girodin is registered has been consulted many a time recently, and is left almost constantly open. She was born on September 17th, 1850, the daughter of M. Hippolyte Girodin, locksmith, and of Marie Julienne Villaird, his wife. The registry was made in the presence of two witnesses neither of whom was able to sign his name, and her father, and then the Mayor signed for them. Marie Rose Girodin, who later on developed into "Lady Violet Goold," was the youngest of five children. - The home in which Mrs Goold was born is an old-fashioned village house .standing opposite an old mill owned by her late brother-in-law, M. Tardy. As a girl Marie Rose Girodin was sent to work as a lingere, and soon became very proficient as a needleworker in linen. It was curious that with her ambitioUF, self-assertive character her father should have considered it wise to give her in marriage at the age of nineteen to a village weaver named ■Cesar Berruyer. He seems to have been a good, hard-working young fellow, but in no wise suited to the character of Marie Rose Girodin.

I Sho was, however, ambitious, and her native mountain village was too small a place for her. She early attracted the notice of the ycung men ■of the village, several of whom courted her, which gave, her the reputation of being a prominent village belle.

•9 The marriage took place on Janu- >' ary 19th, 1870, and her husband was given as residing habitually in Chatte, a neighbouring village. A regular marriage contract was signed stipulating a number of points as to the' property to be held by the husband and wife respectively, which seems to indicate that they had some means. But if the reports of old inhabitants who still remember those days are to be believed, the ninteen-year-•old lingere, or needlewoman, and the twenty-eight-year-old weaver quarrelled on the day of their marriage, and for nearly every subsequent day while they lived together, with the result that one month after the marriage ceremony and the signing of the marriage contract the weaver founc 1 himself without a wife. It was not until twenty-four years after she had abruptly left her husband that she returned to her native village-that is to say, about 1894 — and then she was accompanied by Mr Goold, to whom she was supposed to have been recently married. A Copenhagen correspondent writes: —From a most reliable source I hear that a curious prophecy of Mmo. Levin's docm was made in Paris, in the beginning of the year. Mme. Levin met three Danish gentlemen with whom she was acquainted, and tie four went together to see a gipsy fortune teller. The gipsy declared that only one out of the four would li"e the year out, and predicted that Madame (. Levin would be murdered.

The listeners laughed, but the gipsy's prophecy came all too true. Mr Heming Just, one of the party, and quite a young, man, caught fever in Hongkong and died in March. M. Menck, of Copenhagen, a well-known tradesman, who was also present, died a few months later, and Mme. Levin has met her death in the manner the gipsy prophesied.