ZOLA OUTDONE IN REAL LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14679, 13 May 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

ZOLA OUTDONE IN REAL LIFE.

PITIFUL TRAGEDY OF A PEASANT

FARMED. Paris, March 29.— young man of twenty, Pierre Juliet, was arrested yesterday at Chavroche, near Moulins, for the murder of his own father, and confessed his crime.

' The story is one of those grim tragedies of French peasant life which are almost incredible in their sordid horror to any one who does not know, as Frenchmen, know, that Zola's book, "La Terr©," rather under than over states the tragic criminality of many lives in the French provinces. Thomas Jallet, the murdered man, was forty-nine years old. He had made money, and* on the farm with him, besides his wife and Pierre, his twenty-year-old son, lived his wife's parents, the Virots, a hale and hearty man and woman well on in the sixties. All five of them worked hard, but they were not good friends by any meane, for Thomas Jallet was known to have laid by money and the Virots had none.

The Virots hated Jallet for this allsufficient reason, and with extraordinary patience and extraordinary cunning they had, while eating Jallet's bread, spent the last ten years in the taek of winning his son Pierre's affections from him. ' And Francine Jallet, his wife, their daughter, hated her husband. Life on the farm was silence in an atmosphere of hatred. But old Virot, with his black blouse and mangy fur cap, which he wore winter and summer, had a way of preventing his son-in-law from uttering a word. Thomas Jallet, although he was the master, had not forgotten the days when he had been: a suitor for his wife Francine's hand. Old Virot, with his furtive eyes anddow voice, had intimidated him then la mere Virot, with her short nod of grudging •welcome, had always frightened him out of his wits, and Francine had always laughed at him, had never listened to him, and had married him, he knew, because the'Virots had no money, and he, Thomas Jallet, had a little.

Prosperous Farmer. Jallet's farm prospered, Jallet grew rich, and he was almost happy, for he loved hiswork and loved his little Pierre, until the Virots had a bad year, which ruined them completely, and Erancine Jallet told her husband that her parents were to live with them in future. Thomas Jallet would have protested had he dared, but he had never gono against his wife's will, and he did not dare.

And for the last ten years Thomas Jallet, the wealthy farmer, has been of less consideration on the farm than the old lame dog, which little Pierre had picked up and brought home one afternoon. For the dog got an occasional kind word, as well as its food. Little by little, too, after the Virots came to live at Chavrochc, there came a change over Pierre Jallet's manner to his father. The boy of ten had been a little man who was hus father's principal companion, and was to bo his father's strong right hand. As he grew older Pierre's nature had changed. Jallet found to his horror that the boy was becoming more and more like his grandfather Virot. He spoke to his father in the same surly off-hand way as the Virots did, and oftenand that was the hardest to bear—he jeered at him like his wife Erancine. Gradually Thomas Jallet became soured and silent, took his meals at the furthest corner of |jhe kitchen table, or, more often still, put a piece of bread into his pocket, carried a can of soup with him, and fed at the far end of the meadow, where sour looks and cross words would not spoil his appetite. The ten years passed with the monotonous rapidity of years in the country. Pierre Jnllet was twenty and a man. He looked more like his grandfather than over. There was no change to be seen in Virot and his wife. They were as cunning, as ehifty, and apparently as strong as they had always been. The Tragedy. A fortnight ago the tragedy happened. There was a foolish dispute about sowing a field. Old Virot, his wife, and their grandson Pierre, fell on Thomas Jallet, and in his horror at his son's attack on him, the old man (for though only fortynine Jallet was quite .an old man now), stood unprotected and let the blows rain down on him until one from his son's stick on the temple killed him. The neighbours wore not very much surprised at Jallet's disappearance. When they asked for him old Virot or Pierre would always answer carelessly, " Oh, he's (about somewhere." But after a fortnight had passed by and no one in the neighbourhood had seen Jallet, whispers got to the ears of the garde champctro (a sort of country policeman) and ho went into Moulins and laid information at the gendarmerie. Yesterday the gendarmes found Thomas Jallot'e body in a pond four miles from the farm. Tho Virots "knew nothing", and said nothing. Pierre Jallet broke down before those staring eyes and confessed everything. His grandparents had taught him to luate his father, had taught him that Thomas Jallet by the mere act of living, was keeping him from his inheritance. He knew that there were 20,000 francs (£800) hoarded up somewhere and he wanted the money. When they had quarrelled he had struck and killed his father.

Then he was frightened. He had put the body into a potato sack, fie had carried it upon his back four miles into the country, he had thrown it as far as hecould into the pond, and brought the sack back to the farmhouse. " There are potatoes in it now," he said. And that was Thomas Jallet'e funeral oration.