A GIRL'S EXTRAORDINARY SUICIDE.

Evening Post, Volume XLIV, Issue 44, 20 August 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

A GIRL'S EXTRAORDINARY SUICIDE.

Maria Lalois, the 17-year-old daughter of a retired colonel in the French Army, committed suicide at Algiers lately under the most extraordinary circumstances. She had for some time been engaged to a young man of excellent family named Eugene Lafont, and one day they quarrelled. The same night the girl, after returning from a dance, chatted with her father for a while, insisting upon filling his pipe, and then, kissing him, asked him, apparently in a jesting way, how he thought ho would get along without her. Tho colonel made some affectionate reply. She then said, "Well, you had better make up your mind ; you may soon have to do so." The young girl then retired to her room. She was never seen al>ve again. It is assumed that she undressed herself, and then deliberately cut up the sheets, making them into a kind of rope. She then attached one end of the improvished rope to the balcony, and formed the other into a noose which she tightened round her neck. She must then have thrown herself out of the window. Next morning, at- an early hour, some passers-by were horrified to notice tho body of the girl, attired in nothing but a thin nightdress, dangling between the first and second stories in front of the house. They

immediately gave the alarm. The body waa out down in the presence of the father, whose wild grief evoked exprtisoions of the deepest sympathy. The medical men who were called iv, express the belief that the body must have been hanging from the window for at least five hours before it was discovered.