A FRENCH TRAGEDY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2197, 7 August 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

A FRENCH TRAGEDY.

A Loxdox paper published a story, lately revealed in a French Court of Justice, which i-» po«ihv>>ly horrifying 1 in it«< "suggestion of the persistent misfnitunc which may fall upon a life apparently surrounded with good conditions. The victim was the son of u wealthy man a r Tanisuou. and mirried, airainst his relatives' will, a I'olivh ojcl with whom he had fallen in love. 1 here was nothing to object to in the marii^iro, hut the relatives either disliked it, believing the girl an adventuress, or hoped for im inheritance which they knew to be especially valuable. Accordingly, they procured the seizure of the wife and her child under the Alien Act, which permits the deportation of immoral foreiyner-s, and shut up the husband in. a roadhou.se, the proof of his insanity being apparently his unequal marriage. Several efforts were made to release him ; but money was so skillfully applied that the efforts failed, and when this month, owing to the apparently accidental fact that the case became known to the Editor of the Voltaire, the Administration ordered an enquiry, the unhappy wretch had been confined, sane among lunatics, ior forty-Jbeven years, more than many a well-filled lifetime. His energy and courage had Leen shattered by his confinement ; bnt he told his story clearly, it was proved by other evidence, and he was set free, without wife or child, unable even to conjecture what had become of them, and himself a released prisoner, ignorant even of public events for nearly fifty years, but possessed of sixty-five millions of francs ( £2,000,000), the accumulations of his large fortuue. Think of what that man had, and of what he had lo»t without ill-desert ! He must have had health, or he could not have lived under those conditions to that age. He had position, fortune, and aome good friendd. He won the girl he wished for his wife. Ho gave the Court the impression of fair brains and a sweet character, and he lived forty-seven years a sane prisoner iv a madhouse. We do no not know that his story, though if has struck the present writer's imagination, owir.sr to the dreadful contrast between his fate and Win possessions, is exceptionally painful. There was a Russian oilicer, was there not? who was imprisoned by C/ar Paul for three days, as a mere hint not to flirt where he saw his Sovereign flirting, but who was forgotten, and remained in a close cell for fifty years, emerging whiteheaded to beg to be taken back. There must have been hundreds of such cases among the Christian captives in Barbary, and only the other day a British Agent found in Bokhara many slaves growing old who had been captured in forays, ancl who, attempting to escape, had been bliuded. there au4 then. <