A PARISIAN SCANDAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XII, Issue 4129, 6 February 1875, Page 5 (Supplement)

A PARISIAN SCANDAL.

A highly dramatic trial has been concluded before the Assize Court of Versailles. Dumas the Younger could not have created a stronger situation in defence of the thesis laid down in the preface to Claude's Wife than the one presented quite naturally on this occasion. The attitude of the public prosecutor, of the judges and the jury, favoured an extension of the lut-la doctrine. M. Moulin, the Claude of this affair, was prosecuted "for having with premeditation tired at his wife and the vicar of Chevreuse, with whom she carried 011 guilty relations, and grievously wounded them both. M. Moulin is a respectable draper in the sleepy and very priest-ridden town of Chevreuse, a Conservative in his polities, but sufficiently moderate to be esteemed by the Radicals of the place. M. Moulin is, moreover, goodlooking, in the prime of life, and of a fine carriage. Ho shewed a patriotic spirit when the Prussians invaded the quiet vale in which he dwells. His past life bore the sifting of the public prosecutor, M. Harel, who declared it was with pain that he asked for a condemnation, which all the spectators felt must be }>ro formtl. Tile president, on whom devolves the police of the courts, ordered the gendarmes who conducted M. Moulin into the dock to fall back as far as it was possible, in order to mark his feeling of respect for the prisoner. This order was met by jury and public with an approving hum. M. l'Abbe Marteau, the paramour of Moulin's > wife, is undergoing a sentence of six months' j imprisonmeut, 011 the complaint of tho) aggrieved husband, at Rambouillet. He was brought into court closely guarded, to be heard as a witness, and was received with an angry murmur, of which, with a gesture, the presiding judge expressed his disapproval. Madame Moulin, very elegantly dressed in black silk and velvet, was also 011 the witness bunch,, but as the husband had had the magnanimity to exercise _ prerogative of pardon, in consideration of her wound and children, he did not send her to gaol with the abbe. She came to give evidence. When she was called, a scene highly characteristic of a French tribunal happened. The counsel for the defence asked, "Does M. le Procureur insist 011 this lady being examined to prove the premeditation of her husband The Judge-Advocate at ouce waived his right, and Madame Moulin was courteously told to sit down. The liaison between her and the abbe, it appeared had existed many months before its discovery by Moulin, who, at 2 o'clock in the morning ofAugust 14, oureturning from a business journey, found the priest in Madame Moulin's room. On ascertaining this painful fact he loaded a revolver, and going to his wife's chamber, called upon her and the priest to open tho door. This they were afraid to do, and M. Moulin told them he would wait until doomsday to execute vengeance on them. The wife at last appeared, and threw herself upon her husband, clasping him round the knees, promising repentance, and imploring pardon. He simply took the key of the door from the inside, and, pushing his wife back, locked her up with the vicar, until the gendarmes, whom he had sent for, came to arrest them. Tiien lie went into the courtyard to keep guard on a window from which the priest might have escaped, after waiting there two hours he grew impatient, and resolved to take the law into his own hands. Pursuant to his resolution, M. Moulin climbed up on the dicky of a carriage, and called to his wife to open the window. She hesitating, he broke a pane, and proceeded to draw the bolt. Marteau meanwhile set about forming a barricade with a wardrobe, on seeing which Moulin tired at him two bullets, one of which hit him in the neck under the ear, and the other carried away a joint of the fourth finger. The injured husband next aimed at Madame Moulin, •whom he wounded in the hip. Some neighbours, called by an alarmed maid-servant to prevent murder, contented themselves with ascending a ladder, and watching from a shed the progress of the drama. Severely admonished by the President, they said ! fchey had been long aware of the scandalous conduct of the Abbe, and were not, as heads of families, sorry for his being punished as he merited. Tho guilty Marteau, when he took his st ind in the witness box, was hooted by the audience, and severely reprimanded j by the judge, who said that for many years to corao the people of Chevreuse would have no veneration for the sacred olfice of the priest, owing to his misconduct. Llis wickedness would practically bar to young girls the tribunal of the confessioual. To this the abbe listened with a smooth, downcast air. His evidence, which weat to shew that .Moulin was in no bad passion when he fired, was given in a whining tone, and produ:ci a bad effect. Other testimony of the same nature was given. The fact is that Frenchmen like blood, and the Chevreuse draper was 110 exception to the rule. The law wa3 altogether on his side, if he only had the patience to wait for the gendarmes, or had not felt certain thut he might fire with impunity at his wife ai d c 10 wretched priest. The opportunity to shod l>lo id was too good a one to be lost, and so after awaiting the poliec two hours, M. Moulin carried out m perfectly cold blood the 'ue la doctrine. I lie jury only retired for torni sake, and returned a verdict of not guilty.—Home News.

ABOUT MESMERISM. Mesmerism presents some curious phenomena, yet not altogether inexplicable. A mesmerised patient may be made to believe anything, do anything. His intellect and will appear to be completely subject to the intellect and will of the operator. We are not to believe, however, that the mesmerised person does not really will-to do the things which he docs; that the will of the operator, as is sometimes affirmed, takes the place of his will. The power of the operator rather results from his presenting motives to action (his commands are such), and reason for belief (his assertions arc such), which carry away the mind "of the patient from its not being in a state to weigh motives and reasons against one another. In our normal waking states, our conduct and our faith are determined by the manifold knowledge we possess. When occasion requires, our past experience rises up before us, and helps to guide us. The mind is awake, collected, composed, reminiscent. But in mesmeric sleep the patient is mysteriously cut ofi' from his past knowledge, and even in some measure, though not altogether, from his past habits and tendencies. He is put in a state of isolation. In that position the voice of operator becomes to liirn at once a law and a creed. The operator commands him to do certain things; he does them, for the command is the strongest motive present to his mind. The operator makes absurd statements; he implicitly believes them, for the affirmation is the strongest reason for believing that he can in the circumstances possess. The operator puts him in a pugilistic attitude, and the quiet man instantly becomes combative, for the posture suggests the feeling. The operator changes his position, and puckers his face into a smile, and the man begins to laugh and be jolly ; for as inward gladness wreathes the face with smiles, so in the mesmcrie state the wreathed smile, or a rough imitation of it, begets inward jollity. After all, these phenomena are not greatly different from those of ordinary sleep. In our dreams the most ridiculous circumstances happen, but they do not seem to us ridiculous. The most prepoiterous things are said by the visionary personage with whom we hold intercourse, but they all seem reasonable and right. We have no power of questioning—no tendency to scepticism. Implicit faith is characteristic of all dreamers, and that just because they are cut off from the means of correcting false impressions. The mind will always be led captive by the thoughts which for the tune possess it, for they are the mind. Thus there have been cases in which the dreams have been suggested by whispering into the ears of persons asleep, just as hallucinations are suggested by the operator to the persons in the mesmeric trance.—" A New Theory of Knowing and Known," by John Cunningham, L>. I).