TRAMP WITH AN INCOME. CHAMPAGNE FEAST ROUND A GIPSY FIRE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1908, Page 10

TRAMP WITH AN INCOME. CHAMPAGNE FEAST ROUND A GIPSY FIRE.

Following the clues of a robbery at Sartrouvillc, the Maisons-Lafßtto police came upon a strange human story (writes a Paris correspondent). An innkeeper whom # they questioned about the robbery mentioned that a short timo before a man who looked like a tramp, had bought three bottles of champagne and paid for them with a hundredfianc (£4) note. Tho police followed his tracks to a broken-down roadside hut. Thero they found four vagrants sitting round a gipsy fire. The man with the bank-notes soon made himself known. With a smile and a distinction of manner that contrasted with his shabby clpfches, he produced his pocket-book, saying to the police, "Here arc my papers." They were an instructive package. One was a bank-draft for £72, and from others it appeared that the tramp had been mayor of a commune in the Loiret department. He erjryed the stupefaction wi'Ji which the police scanned the documents, and then, with tho verve begotten of champagne. ho told pact of his life story. . When at the head of a j»ood business he found one day that he had been received by his \yifc, whom ho, adored. Mad with despair, he realised hi.-> possessions and disappeared, taking to tho public road. For twenty years' he hnd mod a-uay from the world and his'family, determined to cut himself adrift from society. He _ drew his income steadily^ and spent it among tho chancp vagabonds whom he met. The police left tho strange wanderer to his night fire and his companions.