Romantic Double Suicide.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 3172, 5 April 1889, Page 2

Romantic Double Suicide.

Dagonot writes in the London Referee:—"Thero lias been a real suicide at Monte Carlo. At the time that the affair occurred,.!, wbb in Nice, but, informatioiflE, an official charaoter having me, 1 determined to sot out at once for the scone of the trageiyantoado myself master of the detaflKoro is nothing more difficuflMh to arrive at the /aots conneiaj with Monte Carlo scandals. Earthing' that is unpleasant, or that is likely to increase the prejudice against the pastime of the Principality, is hushed up with the skill which comes of long practice in the art of concealment. The place at which the suioide was committed was a small house situated in the Condamine at Monaco. In front of it an Italian laborer was at work in the street, With this man I engaged in conversation, and asked him if he had heard of a young couple committing suicide. The reply was: ' I know nothing.' Then I told him what I knew, and rattled some loose silver in my pockets. ' Ah, as the Signor knows so much it cannot matter what I toll him, 1 said the man, and then he pointed out to me the window of the room in which the young couple had come to their end. ' Ah, I saw them often,' ho said, ' this last he dava. while I was at work here. They used to come out arm-in-arm. They were very loving, and I said to myself 'lt is a newly-mar-ried couple,' Having fixed the position of the room well in my eye, I entered the hotel, and found it practically empty. The proprietress came out to receive, mo. I explained that I was looking for rooms for some friends of mine. Cou'iU; seo which apartments wero vlpnt? 'Yes,certainly.' Iwas takenintotnost of the rooms, but nono suited until I found myself'in the augment of the romantic suicide, I said nothing to the lady, nor she to me, The room was a small but comfortable ope. Two wooden beds stood side by sido, These were the beds on which two days previously the lovers had stretched themselves to die. The sun shone in at the open window; the blue Mediterranean glinted below, aud as far as the eye could see all was peace and beauty and the ioyousness of life. It was windows that the young wnjie had taken their last look upon earth. They had looked out upon the sunny land and the deep blue sea with a fixed purpose of self-destruction in their hearts—with the letter .already, written which was to tell their friends the story of their last days,.- It was to this pleasant little room u in which I stood that they returned 'on their last night together,."with all hope gone, with the knowledge in their heartsjhatjyhen tho sun rose again over tho palm groves arid orange trees and 'tho white oliffs and smiling tfeag

they would havo passed from this world to Eternity, What a last walk in the moonlight that must have been I—the man of tweuty-nine, the woman of nineteen; lovers, fugitives from their homes; she a married woman, ho a married man, and— But let me tell it you, beginning, middle, and oiid-lhis perfect French tragedy, this curious study of morals and manners and Monte Carlo, this romance of the passions, this little ■''life drama taken 'palpitating' from the pages of the modem Boulevard novelist. A young married man of Lyons fall in lovo with a younc; married woman. Thoy met secretly, adored each other, and ■agreed to fly togethor-to put the seas between thomselyes and their families, But thero was a slight -difficulty in the way. They had very •-littlemoney for along journey,and they wanted to bo larj far away—in America, far Amorico, Then the idea came to the man that they would take their small capital of a

lew hundred frahca'and go to Monte Carlo and make it it into a fortunea fortuno which would enable them to live in peaco and plenty on a far offshore. So it came that one day, with a small box and a portmanteau, the fugitives arrived at Monte Carlo, and put up at this little hotel, where, for eight franos a day, you can have bed and board. They had only a fow hundred franos with them. In the letter which they have loft behind, thoy oxplaiuod that from tho first their arrangements were complete, They foresaw the possibilities of the situation. They would play until theyliadwon enouph logo to America, or they would lose all and thoy would die together, and give their friends no further trouble about them, They were a few days only in Monte Carlo. They risked their louis only a few at a time, and thoy spent the remainder of the days and evenings in strolling about the romautio glades and cuiet pathway 3 of the beautiful gardens, whispering together of love, and looking into each others oyes, Tho end came quickly. One evening they went up in the soft moonlight to the fairy land ofMonto Carlo. They entered tho Casino, They had come to their last few golden coins. One by one the croupior'a remorseless rako swept them away, and then tho lovers went out of the hot, crowded rooms, out from the glare ofthechandaliers and the swinging lamps, into tho tender moonlight again. Down ' the stakcase of Fortune ' arm in arm they went along the glorious marble terraces that look upon the sea, ou to where, at the ' foot of the great rock on which '' Monaco stands there lies the Conda-

mine. It was their last walk together, the lovers were going home to die, That night, in some way which I was unable to ascertain, the guilty and ruined man and woman obtained some chircoal and got it into their bedroom. They then closed tho windows and doors, and prepared for death. They wrote a letter—a letter which an official assured me was so touching that, as he read it in the room where they lay dead, the tears ran down his cheeks. Then the girl—alio was but a girl—dressed herself in snowy white, and placed in her breast a Bwcet boquct of violets. Then tho cliarcoul was lighted, and the lovers laid themselves out for death, side by side, and passed dreamily into sleep, aud from sleep into death, These are the facts of of'the romantic suicido at Monte Carlo.' It is not a moral story; it is not a new story. I have told it simply as il happened."