A Rustic Luerezia Borgia.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1887, Page 6

A Rustic Luerezia Borgia.

A Parts correspondent writes :—A species of rustic Lucresda Borgia, named Bluchet who lived at Brienon, a small town in the department of Yonne, has just been condemned to hard labour for life ou v charge of having poisoned her husband and a lodger in her house. This woman, having exhibited a weakness for the company of a local barber, was naturally remonstrated with by her husband, an easy-going kind of person. The lodger, an elderly man named Forgest, also ventured to point out to her tho wickedness of her ways, and thenceforward became a mark for her revenge. Bluchet, sitting by the reproaches of the two men, resolved to put them out of bhe way, and, with that object in view, began with her husband, by putting doses Of arscnio in his soup. She treated Fogesb in the same fashion, and after the lapse of a few days, the old man sickened and died. The husband succumbed six days afterwards, and as happens very often in French rural districts, even in the present epoch of civilisation, the bodies were buried without inquests being held. The unseemly haste, liowever_wliich. the murderess displayed in endeavouring to induce the barber to marry her immediately after her husband's death, aroused the suspicions of her rural neighbours, who lost no time in communicating with tho local police. The charming Bluchet was bhen arrested, the bodies of her victim, were disinterred, and the murder was out. She had used enough arsenic in the accomplishment of her foul purpose to poison half a dosen men. During the trial she made the most shameful allegations against her victims, and denied her guilt in the most barefaced manner. The jury, in according extenuating circumstances to this • Jezebel, showed their readiness, like most of their colleagues, both in Paris and in the provinces, to make things easy for criminals, who are growing bolder every day in this country.