JEALOUSY AND VITRIOL THROWING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8082, 24 September 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

JEALOUSY AND VITRIOL THROWING.

The Daily Telegraph Paris correspondent, writing on Tuesday night, says :—There is another sensational trial in Paris to-day. It lacks the tragic elements of the Pranzini case, but is none the less interesting to the habitues of the Assize Court who are stil* here. This time the accused is a woman, the widow Bslligand, who, imitating the example of Marie Beer, threw vitriol over a faithless lover. He succumbed to his injuries, his companion, who also received some of the fatal douche, escaping with the loss of an eye. The widow Belligand looked a most uninteresting person as she stood up to be examined by President Morand. A plain-featured, smalMized brunette, with the air of the kitchen about her, it was difficult to conceive how she had thrown her nets around her victim, a young architect named Gourty. She had lived some time with the architect, when be suddenly announced to her that he was about to get married. Hismarriage took place in the country, and he set up in business in the J&uy Gay Laasac. Madame Belligand found him out. She wrote to him in prose and verse, conjuring him to return to her longing arms. iShe spoke of sorrow leaving its traces on her charms, and implored Gourty to come back and dry her tears. As he was inexorable, she pursued him like a demon in his walks abroad, and when he went to the theatre; and on one occasion she endeavoured to shoot him in a Cafe, but her arm was caught by a customer of the establishment. A few months ago she was seen prowling about in the Rue Gay Lassac, holding something under her cloak. Many passers-by said she looked as if she meant mischief, but no one thought of calling the attention of the police to her. When M. Courty and his friend walked passed her she flung the contents of her phial in the face of her lover, whose mouth, neck, and breast were covered jvith the corrosive fluid. His companion was injured on the right jaw and his eye was burned out. Courty died in hospital after fifteen days' excruciating pain, but his friend recovered by slow degrees. The woman alleged in her defence to-day that she only intended to disfigure her lover, by whom she had had a child. The president, airing his knowledge of Lempriere's classical dictionary, or drawing perhaps on the scholarjtio memories of his youth, made some sarcastic remarks about the mythological existence of the infant, but the widow sturdily maintained that she had not bought a child from a midwife for the purpose of palming off its paternity on M. Courty.