HORRIBLE MURDERS IN PARIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6296, 21 January 1882, Page 7

HORRIBLE MURDERS IN PARIS.

Murder assumes at times a cynical form, which makes us speculate whether its perpetrators belong to the human or to the brute species. A young miscreant, thirteen years of age, lately enticed a little boy into his room, stripped him, and calmly slashed open the poor child's stomach, because he wished to try the experiment of what his own sensations might be, and how his victim might look under the circumstances. After having completed his physiological experiment of vivisection he quietly went forth and read a sensational novel. When arrested his first enquiry was what the papers had said about him. Paris was enlivened recently by two murders equally cynical. A drunken coachman staggering homewards stabbed a boy in the groin, pleading as a justification, "II m'ennuyait." Another ripped open a lad's stomach iu the street because he wanted amusement —"parce que Qa.'in'amusc." In both cases the boys were carried to the hospital where they died in horrible agony. How is the law to deal with these monsters ? If it refuses to regard .them as responsible agents, it is the duty of society to devise Btrong measures for its own protection, and for preventing such criminals from preying upon the .Republic. These human cryptogrammes are the residue of the rauk soil left by the receding tide of the Commune, and much has been brought back upon our shores by the returning flood of the amnesty. M. Grdvy's humane disposition wrests the peu from his hand when summoned to death warrants. The boyna and transportation have no terrors for criminals; the tall, gaunt form of the guillotine alone inspires them -with dread, and from this they know that they will be saved by M. GrcSvy's weakness.—Globe.