HOAXING A CANDIDATE.

Evening Post, Volume XLVI, Issue 132, 2 December 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOAXING A CANDIDATE.

-♦ M. Robinet, the illiterate candidate for Parliament, who went round Paris the other day blowing a hunting horn in order to call! attention to his electoral programme, has been nearly stoned to death in the Trocadero district, owing to a hoax of which he was made a victim by a facetious printer. The compositor, taking advantage of M. Robinet's inability to read or write, drew up the address, couching it in the most unparliamentary language at hie command. It was, in fact, composed of a tissue of the vilest insults to the local electors, while the candidate himself was not spared by the irrepressible hoaxer. Hardly had M. Robinet appeared in public between his boards than he was followed by a crowd of people who threatened to lynch him. Some threw stones at the man, but he found a few sympathisers, who evidently saw through the joke, .md defended him. A free fight raged for a few moments around the candidate, his friends and his foes energetically plying their fists and sticks, while Robiuet looked intensely amazed at the tumult. He was finally extricated from his perilous position by the police. Notwithstanding his adventure the victim of the printer's hoax intends to continue his candidature, and professes to have faith in his chances of securing a seat in the Palais Bourbon, where he would be a greater curiosity than the Deputy in a blouse or the peasant politician from Brittany. '