THE PARIS MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9452, 24 August 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PARIS MYSTERY.

By degrees more light is being thrown on the Paris mystery, in conncction with which several bankers have been arrested. The person who was made away with, or " sequestered," was a man of independent means, named Antonin Caudrain, whose history (the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says) is a strange one. Caudrain is, or was, a Swiss, about 50 years of ago, who had been employed as a manservant by a .Madame Fessart, the widow, it is said, of an American shipowner. Madame Fessart died in ISSS, at her Paris residence in the Rue d'Amsterdam, and left most of her fortune, consisting of bonds and securities in the Credit Fancier, Panama Canal, and Ville de Paris, valued at £SOOO, to her manservant. The will was contested by the heirs, who carried it to the courts, where they were beaten, after twelve months' litigation. Caudrain was, therefore, left in undisputed possession of his legacy, which he deposited in various banks, notably in one kept by two persons called Parry and Chapotat in the Rue Laflitte. His sudden accession to comparative opulence turned the head of the honest domestic, who began to entertain suspicions that he was followed by thieves and haunted by ghosts. He became alliicted with religious mania, and prayed both loud and long, so much so that his neighbours were kept awake at nights by his orisons, and lie received notice to quit his dwelling in the Rue Ponchet. He next went to live near the Batignolles Church, where he became friendly with the parish priest and the sacristan, who kept him well supplied with holy water with which to banish demons and sorcerers. Not content, however, with the consecrated liquid, Caudrain walked about wit!) a small arsenal secreted on his person, He prohbed his bed every night, with a sword to kill the devils, and his last appearance in public was in the early morning of the 30th January, ISSS, whvn ha left his rooms and descended into the street, with a candle in one hand and a club in the other, in order, as he said, to mount guard before his dwelling. By the helpof a friendly dustman, the concierge of the house induced the poor maniac to return to his bedroom; but about ten minutes after Caudrain had been upstairs he went down once more into the street, and has not been seen since by his friends. His furniture was sold after fifteen months by the landlord, who, in effecting the necessary legal formalities for this purpose, discovered that a person named Mongin, 35 year* old, had been receiving dividends in Caudrain's name. Mongin had as an accomplice the sacristan of the Church of St. .Michael at Batignolles, one Favreuil, who is in custody, and has given "indications" to the police. The Abbe Lemoine, parish priest of the church, has also given evidence in the ease, but nothing has yet transpired relative to the whereabouts of the missing man.