A GREVBEARD'S RUSE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 248, 19 October 1908, Page 2

A GREYBEARD'S RUSE.

A greybeard in Paris last August married a girl in her teens, and kept wondering whether she loved him. Would she weep when he died, or would she rejoice, and marry again? He would put her to the test, and he devised a gruesome stratagem. He locked himself up in a room, and waited. After some hours his wife, wondering at his unaccountable disappearance, had the door broken open. On the bed lay her husband, his hands crossed, his face white, his body motionless, apparently dead. Now the wife worild show what she really felt. She gazed at him, came to the conclusion that he really was dead, and danced a breakdown in the room. Up leaped the corpse, arid roared, " So that is how you would grieve for me? Then take this," and threw clocks and candlesticks at her. She fled, and he continued to vent his disappointment by smashing all the furniture in the flat. One can hardly congratulate him upon the success of his stratagem. A philosopher would have let well alone.