Strange Discovery.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 43, 20 February 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

Strange Discovery.

A singular discovery has been made by the workmen engaged in restoring a large house at Bonneuil-en-France, a email village in the department of Seine-et-Oise. While engaged in excavating at the back of the house they came across what appeared to be an ancient cesspool, measuring about two yards in diameter, and aboub four yards deep, ab the bottom of which were four skelebons, which proved upon examination to be those of a man, a woman, a child, and a dog. In the same place were also whab appeared to be tbe remains of a feast, bottles, vases, pitchers, pieces of glass of extraordinary fine quality, &c. t The local doctors, with the aid of a colleague from Paris, have examined the remains, and believe the male skeleton to be that of a man aboub forby years of age, while the child is said to have been about four. The doctors are unable bo determine even approximately the age of the woman. The different objects found seem to belong bo the time of Henry IV. The cure of the village gives the following as a probable explanation :— During the wars of religion, in the reigns of Henry 111. and Henry IV., one of the Dukes of Bonneuil-enrPrance, on his return home after a long campaign, surprised his wife and ber paramour in the act of feasting together. Carried away by rage he had both the man and the woman, together with the child and dog and the whole of the banquet, thrown into the cesspool behind the mansion. Ib is nob stated whether there is any historical basis for this explanation.