Parisian Romance

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 273, 27 November 1901, Page 1

Parisian Romance

A HUSBAND’S STRATAGEM,

A PJ3HMJX of venerable aspect alighted at an hotel in the neighbourhood of the Saiut-Lazare Railway Station, i Paris, fie introduced himself to the landlord as a wealthy merchant from Bordeaux, and was welcomed with all the deferenco due to so respectablo a ■ personage, the more so as ho confided a sum of money to the care of his host. The old man, whose long white beard was the admiration of all beholders, was treated with every attention by the servants of the house, and, having jiassed on the staircase a pretty lady who seemed to have taken his fancy, he experienced little difficulty in finding out some interesting particulars about her. Ihe smartlooking person, as one of the waiters explained, was on very friendty terms with a married man, to whom she paid a visit every afternoon.' The subject was then dropped, nor, moreover, were there any further meetings on the staircase; but, on the following afternuon, when the fair charmer had hung the key of her room up in the bureau, and had sallied forth on her career of conquest, the elderly gentleman with the white beard stole softly in when nobody was about, and, putting the key into his pocket, made his way to the chamber which had just been vacated. Shutting the door without exciting any notice, he went to the big trunk which was lying on the floor, and breaking open the lock rum-

maged in it until he found banknotes to the amount of three thousand francs stowed away in a corner. He had just packed the notes carefully ia his pocket book when one of the servants, hearing a faint noise in the room which ho had believod to be empty, walked in, and catching sight of the old man who was currently believed to be a pattern of all the virtues, seized him by tho collar, with the reproachful cry, “ Why, you are a thief!” Tho bewilderment of the worthy garcon when the long white beard came off in his hand may well bo imagined, and, as he stood gaping in speechless amazement, the erewhile venerable elder with whom he had been dealing so roughly uttered a mild protest. “1 am not a thief! ” he

exclaimed. “ I am the husband of the naughty woman who has taken this room, and as her abode is legally mine as well I am quite within my right in acting as I liavo done.” At that moment the lady, who had missed her rendezvous with her friend, made in her turn her entry into the chamber. “ Heavens ! My husband ! ” she cried, in horror. “ Yes, it is I,” replied the man, as ho dealt her a couple of ringing boxes on the ear. Then he went downstairs, paid his bill, and started off by the next train for his native village in Normanby. He had got what ho wanted, tho SOOOf. which his wife had taken off with her when she eloped. Tho rest of the business will be as effectively settled by a divorce suit.