Clippings.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 376, 26 April 1879, Page 22

Clippings.

THE WINNER OF THE FIVE THOUSAND. 4, (From the World.) The last of the eighty thousand prizes of the biggest lottery in the world has been drawn. 'The eighty thousand winners, bar one, have had their growl because they missed the grand prize. The odd millions scattered over Europe, Asia, Africa, aud America, who won nothing, have proved to a demonstration that it was all the fault of the man who tempered the spring for the wheels. The lottery will soon be forgotten ; but before it is forgotten, there is obviously one thing left to do—to say a few words about that “ barred one” who has never grumbled at all, the journeyman leather dresser who has won the prize worth five thousand pounds. His name is Aubriot ; he lives in tlie Rue Cardinal Lemoine, beyond the Pantheon, No. well, there is no harm in saying it —No. 76, since lived is now the fitting word : he has fled. Fait. Congratulatory friends of the harpy tribe made the place too hot for him.

He has had a stroke of ideal good luck. What are lotteries for, if not to raise poverty to affluence ? They are but sensation plays, with a weak ending when their prizes merely increase the rich man’s store. Aubriot is just the man that should have won, according to the dramatic fitness of things—poor, apparently virtuous with his poverty ; a member of a class that would ever have suspected foul play if the prize had gone to a millionaire. I could not resist the temptation to go and see him, though I felt I should be but one more importunate of a train of hundreds at his humble door. I diviued rightly that he would hare already caught enough of the trick of greatness to demand introductions, so I obtained one. The very concierge seemed almost to require a supplementary introduction to herself before taking up my name. She was quite right; her humble lodger has risen to the height of notoriety at a bound, and in common self-defen ce, he must adopt notoriety’s safeguards for the privacy of domestic life. A month ago I might have mounted to his garret floor in the big dirty house without a word of challenge ; to-day there was a preliminary journey up and journey down of the faithful janitress before I obtained leave to pass into the presence. It was the end door of the passage to the left, on the fifth flooi’, she told me ; and it was no less than the truth, for “ Aubriot ” was written ou tho panel. I knocked, and in another moment I was seated in a little tiled bedcliambcr-sittiug room, perfectly neat, and opening into a kitchen and common room beyond. The family was around me in quorum. Near the window an ag?d, mild-eyed woman, who had once been handsome, the winner’s mother ; on the other side a younger wornau, like the elder, trim, housewifely, the winner’s wife ; between them an open-faced broad-shouldered fellow about forty, the winner. He received me with tho grave politeness of the French workman. Yes, he had won the “ gros lot,” and he was to receive the money in a day or two. The papers were right there, and wrong in all else. It is not true that he had played the fool when he heard tho news, or that he had been spending money right aud left ever since. How could he, when he had not yet touched a sou of it ? Those things were calumnies. Ask his wif® how he had borne his good luck. “ He just turned white, Monsieur,” said the smiling wife, “ and then he turned red ; and that was all.” “ Wicked calumnies !” said the old mother, shaking her head. “ He was a steady sober man before, aud he has been nothing less since.” Then Aubriot went on. w Why should he forget himself because he had had a stroke of good fortune ? Ho would live a bit more comfortably, of course; have a better roof over his head, and nicer things to eat, but there would bo no other change. As I had been so good as to come and see him, be would just give me the short history of his purchase of the lottery ticket. He was in .* workshop, and he had six mates, and they e'*< h bought a ticket or two. They used to ta’l: about their chances;' and one day they eum< f a sort of agreement that, if auy of them won the big prize, he should give all the others lift y

francs apiece—and fifty francs the others should have as soon as Aubriot was paid. It was said in a half-joking way of course, for none of them had much hope of it ; how could they? Aubriot bought ticket after ticket at odd times, till at last he had eight. Then his wife stopped him. “Quite true,” said the wife. “ I gave him a scolding, and told him we could not afford to waste so much money on a mere chance. Eight francs gone already,—something like a week’s rent.” “ It was lucky she did not stop me before,” said Aubriot, “ for that last ticket bought was the ticket that won the prize.” “ But how was she to know that,” interposed the grandmother. Well, Aubriot stopped wastiug his money, and “ in a manner of speaking ” he forgot all about tho lottery. I might guess he did not think much about it, for ou tho very Sunday morning of tho first drawing he was hard at work up to 1 o’clock, according to his wont. He generally made half a day on Sunday, and lie made it that day as usual. In the afternoon lie took' his wife out to see some friends, and they heard the hawkers calling the evening papers with the winning numbers for the day. He bought a paper, La France ; but still he thought so little about it that lie never opened it till he got home, between 10 and 11 at night. Then he looked at the list, and read, “Fourth Series, No. 978,599, wiuner of tliegros lot, a silver service, or 125,000 francs.” He knew he had something in tlie fourth series, and he remembered there were a good many nines.iu the number. He weut quietly into the next room and looked at the ticket, came quietly back to liis wife— then he supposed he must have been rather pale—and said, “ We’ve won the graud prize !” “ Nonsense !” ( etc betise!) said the wife. “Read that, then;” and he held the ticket before her. To say that lie did not sleep all night would be a calumny, but he certainly did not close an eye till 2 in the morning. Everybody said “ c’te betise !” at first. He went to the workshop next morning, aud told them, “ c’te betise !” He had one way with all of them : “Do you know how to read ? Well, look at that ;” and he showed them ticket and paper. By that night the news was known in his neighborhood ; by the next day to all Paris.

“ Since then,” said Aubriot, pausing, and drawing a deep breath, “ you can’t think what a time I’ve had of it ! Letters by tho dozen every post, and just callers, asking me to do all sorts of things —to lend some of the money, to give it away, to put twenty thousand francs here in a speculation, thirty thousand there. It madame quite ill to have to answer them.”

“But you surely never thought of doing that ?”

“ How could he help it, sir !” said the wife promptly. “ Some of the writers sent stamps for a reply, and it would not have been honest to keep them.” “That was their artfulness,” said the old mother.

“At last I had to leave off answering each one, and put a general answer in the papers to tell them one and all not to bother me. The worst of it was, one answer would not do for some of them ; they would write again. My wife will show you what a lot we had.” And the wife produces a smallish box crammed full. “ The callers were worse ; I could not get my meals for them —all sorts of crack-brained schemes. You never heard the like.”

“ Yes, monsieur, you are quite right; I won’t let anybody touch a sou of it, no matter how nicely he may talk. I shall put it all away in a bank for a time, and then take the whole family down to my old mother’s home in the country, and live quiet for a time. Here you see the whole family, except ray wife’s little niece, who lives with us. We have not anv children of our own. Her fortune is made, I hope, as well as ours. Call her in, and let her speak to the gentleman. There ! and I can assure you she is as good as she looks. O, I don’t think I shall be dull in tlie country for the want of something to do. I can garden a bit. Besides, I have not been dull here, though, of course, I have left off regular work since I won the prize. I have pottered about in tho house ; I like it. I shall certainly not try to be a fine gentleman with my money. What sort of figure should I cut iu company—a working man ? I daresay I shall go into some business when I come back to Paris ; but all that is uncertain. I am glad I won it, of course ; who would not be ? But it is a great comfort to me to think that before I won it I was not altogether dependent on good luck. There was not a penny owing in this house, and we had a little put by. You know what the prize is—a great silver service for the table, or its value. Well, the service was of no use to me; but I thought as M. Menier, the chocolate-maker, had been very kind to my family—my wife worked for him, ami so did my mother before her—it would be only right to give bitn the first chance of buying it on his own terms. But he did not want it —of course, if you come to think of it, he has plenty of his own ; and so I am going to take the 125,000 francs.”