A TRAGIC STORY OF FRENCH LIFE.

Evening Star, Issue 7749, 22 October 1888, Page 2

A TRAGIC STORY OF FRENCH LIFE.

The results of free love in Prance have been strikingly exemplified by a a fearful family drama which is just now being unfolded before the Assize Court of the department of the Deux-Sevres. The facts briefly stated are these:—ln 1880 M, Ghevallereau, a law student at Poitiers, lived with a pretty milliner, Julia Ferrand. She bore him four children, one of whom, a daughter, died. After several years of cohabitation, M. Chevallereau, at the instigation of his father and his friends, threw off Julia, and refused to recognise her children, who were thereby reduced with their mother to destitution. One of the sons—Honord—partially lost his reason, and had to be placed in an asylum. The two others—Gaston and Ernest —who were struggling in Paris, sought out their father at Poitiers; but he threatened to shoot them if they returned there again. The boys therefore went away in fear and trembling ; but in a few months’ time, poverty pinching them worse than ever, they resolved to try their luck at Poitiers once more. They bought a revolver, and on the way to their father’s house practised with it on some trees. On entering the paternal chateau they were received by a housekeeper, who gave them two glasses of wine; but when M. Chevallereau came in he threw the glasses out of the door and his sons after them. Ernest Ferrand then drew out his revolver and shot his father, who tottered to bis room and expired. The boy Honord, who was in an asylum, on hearing that his brothers were arrested, committed suicide. Gaston and Ernest were put on their trial for the murder before a Niort jury, which, after twenty minutes’ deliberation, “acquitted ” them.