A SORDID TRAGEDY.

Evening Star, Volume 12869, Issue 12869, 19 July 1906, Page 5

A SORDID TRAGEDY.

Lnulo Zola has, like all realists, oftoi been accused of exaggeration, but cvery iiom- and then ibinte liar pen in the world to prove tkit Zola, who saw, giimlv. lSa w only too truly. When Zola'a book, ' There&e Raquiu,' wad published there was an outcry that no such Avoman as Therese was possible. To-day, thirty Years after the publication of the book, the Assize Court of t.h;> Seine Inferieure has sentenced a Therese llacmin in real life. She. lived in the little village of Bose-Reranger, a, village of 109 inhabitants and one inn. Of this inn Mdme Tulle was mistress, and the master was a drunkard. The blacksmith of the village, Pierre Feuqueres, fell in love with Mdme Tulle, and she with him. "If only my drunkard of a husband were not there, she used to say, we two could marry." But listen to the story as the blacksmith told it himself to the jury: " One evening Tulle was half asleep in tho kitchen after dinner. We were sitting there- having coffee. Mdme Tulle pa?6ed behind her husband, took hold of his neckcloth, and pretended to twist it, looking me straight in the face as she did so. I did not move. 'Will you never have the pluck to do it?' she said, and shrugged her shoulders. Another time she put her two hands round his neck, and pretended to strangle him. He laughed, thinking it was a joke, but site was looking at mo as she said: 'That is what ought to bo done to you.'" On February 18 Feuqueres had his supper at the cabaret, and remained there. Mdme Tulle, who had the key of the cellar, gave tho two men some old brandy, several bottles of champagne, and then more brandy. They sat in ;he bedroom to drink it so that the garde champetro on his rounds should not see that the house was kept open. Tulle became verv drunk, and the blacksmith was not much better. " She," said Feuqueres to tho jury, " looked with her big black eyes straight into mine until her eyes seemed to be dancing from side to side. Tulle had fallen across the bed, and sho pointed to him. 'What is tho use of a thing like that ?' she said. Then, without quite knowing why, almost : n spite of myself, I put my hand jnexle his neckcloth" between lus neckcloth and his neck, and turned it.' She had gone into the kitchen. Sho came back, climbed on to the bed, looked at him, and said: 'Ho is quite dead. He is blue You bad better go now. I shall have to crv tomorrow; I don't know how I shall do"it.'" lite*woman Tulle docs not tell quite the sumo story, but she admits that she said to her lover: "Let him drink himself to death; he will do it." And to the jury she said: "I did not mind Tulle being killed at all, but I did not tell Pierre to kill him." The jurv thought otherwise, for they sentenced Mdme Tulle to ten vears' penal servitude, while tho blacksmith got off with five.