AN INFATUATED LOVER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 129, 1 June 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

AN INFATUATED LOVER.

Mr George Griffith tells the story of E French soldier now undergoing a sen-, tence of penal servitude for betraying Government secrets. In I&88 he chanced to he a sous-officer of the line stationed in Paris. He was dapper, good looking, aRd a delightful talker. He engaged the affections of a lady whose ideas as to expenditure were far too expensive to be gratified out of the pay of a sous-offlcer. Naturally, he got into debt, mortgaged, or sold everything that he had, and / still the lady was unsatisfied. Finally, after certain recriminations, and when he had given her evrything but his honour, she suggested a means by which he could make a little fortune with very little trouble. She had, it appears, made the acquaintance of a gentleman who knew some one connected with a foreign army who would give twenty thousand francs for one of the new pattern Lebel rifles. He entered into correspondence with a certain gentleman,addressing him c.o. Embassy, Paris. His letters were stopped, opened, photographed, and sent on. go were the replies. Then the negotiations were suddenly broken off. and he was summoned before the military tribunal and confronted with the pieces de conviction. He confessed openly, posing as a martyr to la grande passion— and his sentence was deportation for life. When I went into his little sleeping room at Ducos, I found on a little table beside his mosquito curtained toed a photograph of a very good looking1 young woman. On the wall above the table there were two others of the same enchantress, the evil genius of his life. The moment he fell she deserted him. Unlike many another Frenchwoman, who has done so for lover or husband, she did not follow him across the world to Caledonia, and yet every night and morning of his life the man who lost everything, even honour, for her kneels down in front of that table as he might before an altar, and says his prayers with his eyes on those photographs.