EXTRAORDINARY WILL CASE IN FRANCE.

New Zealand Mail, 21 July 1892, Page 35

EXTRAORDINARY WILL CASE IN FRANCE.

(Daily Telegraph , 27 th May.) Forged wills, together with the testaments that have be-n lost or stolen for long years, and which ultimately turn up behind an old folio on a library shelf, or in a secret drawer of a carved oak cabinet, or in the leather pocket of a travelling carriage, have, it must be admitted, been so frequently utilised by writers of fiction as pegs on which to hang the plot 3 of three volume novels as to have reached very nearly the stage of being * played out.’ There has,never, theless, just been concluded at the Palais de Justice, Puris, an extraordinay will case, which in its incidents, and the revelations which it affords of impudent fraud and duplicity, exceeds in startling interest any romance of the kind that the moat prolific of our novelists, male or female, has hitherto produced. A notary, M. Guyard, and a compositor named Gharpentier were put on their trial before the Court of Assizes of the Seine for having forged and uttered the last will and testament of the late M. Adolphe de la According to the acte ■ accusation, a certain Marquise d’Armaille, who died in September, 18S2, bequeathed the whole of her large estates to her brother-ln law, Adolphe. Adolphe, a gentle, man of strong Legitimist opinions, had long resided in affluence in the Department of the Maine et Loire ; but he had a brother Edouard, the one left out of the will, whose sympathies were of a strongly Republican character, and who had been compelled to leave Paris while the Second Empire held supremacy in France, and had taken refuge

at Geneva, where, being a man of simple tastes and industrious habits, he earned a scanty livelihood by manual labour. For many years the two brethren had ceased to speak or even to correspond with each other. Mr Guyard, the notary, was call d in after the death of Madame D’Armailld, to arrange her affairs. It appears that he had somehow or another got into financial difficulties, and, knowiug something of Edouard de la he persuaded him to sign a document empowering the rotary to take over half of Edouard’s share in the estate of the Marquise. The elderly exile of Geneva had not, at the time, the slightest idea of how much the deceased lady had left him, or whether she had bequeathed to him anything at all ; and, indeed, he was not a beneficiary under the will. The next move of Guyaid was to attempt to recoucile the brothers, and to induce Adolphe to make a will in favour of Edouard, in the hope that the latter would surrender a moiety of the legacy to the fortune bringing notary. In this, however, he failed, since in February, 1885, M. Adolphe de la Boussiniere died, leaving all his money to his nephews, the Messieurs de Breon. Twelve month* afterwards Guyard entered into relations with the compositor Cbarpentier, who lived in Paris. This man executed for the notary a will purporting to be in the handwriting of M. Adolphe de La Boussiniore, and according to the terms of this document all previous wills were revoked, and Edouard waa appointed his brother’s sole legatee. This will the prosecution declared to be forged. Guyard lost no time in forwarding the Charpentier made will to the President of the Civic Tribunal of Segre, within whose attributes it was to deal with Adolphe de la Boussinidjre's estate. The refugee at Genova was in the meantime apprised of the discovery of the new will, and brought forward his claim as sole legatee of Adolphe,

which pretensions were naturally resisted by Messieurs de Bidon. After some litiga. tion the court decided in favour of Edouard, who received 500,000 francs on account of hi 3 inheritance, and wa3 thus by a sudden freak oi fortune raised, like John Marchmont in Miss Braddon’s novel, from a condition of sordid indigence to one which was to him the pinnacle of wealth. Besides the money paid him on account, he was allowed to install himself both in the town and country mansions of the Armaille family in which he alternately resided, keeping up a very good appearance, and on the whole highly enjoying himself. The poor old gentleman might yet be in a prosperous position had it not been for the circumstances that the worthies charged with conspiring to concoct the will of Adolphe fell out. Charpentier grumbled at what he considered the trifling bonus conferred on him by the notary for manufacturing the will. Then the dissatisfied caligrapher turned his attention towards M. Edouard de la Boussin'ere, who, suspeoting no mal. practices in connection with his brother’s testament, and strong in the consciousness of his own innocence throughout the trans. action, repelled the solicitations of the compositor for money and threatened to prosecute him. The undaunted blacky

mailer next proceeded to Guyard to one of the heirs. A formal complaint was the “ Parquet ”of Paris. The General took the matter up, and OuH|j|JjS and Charpentier were arrested, the Judge dTnstruction, and trial. The unfortunate M. Edouard Bousslnihre hastened to give up all to the family who appeared to be the rightful heirs, of Adolphe, since the experts were unanimous in declaring that the will fabri* cated by Charpentier and propounded by Guyard was,although an admirable imitation, nothing more than an arrant forgery. At the trial the inculpated natary, on being interrogated by the presiding judge, adopted a certainly ingenious scheme of defence. He averred that the tw.o papers purporting to be the will of M. Adolphe de la Bouissin'ire, and under the terms of which the entire estate passed to Edouard, were in their origin wholly and entirely authentic, and that Charpentier had merely “reconstituted ” them at the notary’s request and underjbis Instructions, the normal documents having been lost by himself. On Tuesday last the trial was concluded. The Oourtfound that the contested will was a false one, but they acquitted Charpentier of the charge of criminal forgery, thus endorsing with approval one part of the notary’s defence, notably that the compositor, or lithographer, or facsimiliet, or whatever may be hia precise craft, had only followed out Guyard’a directions in writing a will, which he did not necessarily know to be a fraudulent one. The notary, however, found himself sadly mistaken in supposing that the court, although it had acquitted the assistant colleague, would absolve the principal from the guilt of having propounded the forged instrument. The tribunal found Guyard guilty of having wilfully and knowingly uttered an apocryphal will, and he was condemned to 10 years’ imprisonment, to a fine of 100 f., and to the payment of such expenses as had been incurred in the case by the Charpentier, although he escaped servitude, was not allowed to go altogetflH scot free. He and the notary were the “ Partie Civile,” or Nisi Prius, the court, for having injured the of the De Bidon family, and the two fendants were both cast in 20,000 f. —a round sum, and one, we should the notary who goes to gaol for 10 yearsfl will not be in any very great hurry to! disburse, while the task of screwing 20,000 m franks out of Charpentier would be, to all i appearance, as difficult as getting blood out of a stone or breeks off a Highlander. Guyard, who seems to be a reproduction in real life of the scoundrelly Jacques Ferrand iD Eugene Sue’s “ Mysteries ~br Paris,” is certainly a disgrace to the honourable and, as a rule, highly respeoted branch of the French legal professon which he followed. The French notaries, typically, correspond to our old family solicitors of the highest class. They are to a large extent the bankers and financial advisers of their clients, as well as the adjusters of marriage settlements, and have very rareiy proved faithless to their trust. From one individual, however, inno. cently connected with this cations case, it would be cruel to withhold the expression of the deepest sympathy and commiseration. Poor old M. Edouard de la Boussiniere had never swerved from hia Republican convictions when Napoleon 111. ruled France with a rod of iron, and had very contentedly borne the bitterness of exile, and unmurmuringly in the evening of his life had toiled day by day for a scanty subsistence. Then suddenly came the knavish Parisian notary, to tell him that he waa hia brother’s heir, and that after long years of self banishment, drudgery and penury ho was the possessor of that which was to him fabulous wealth. He does not appear to have been Intoxicated to any exceptional extent by the unexpected and unhoped for i change in his fortunes ; and a few months | since, when the Guyard Charpentier frauds | first began to be talked about in Paris, a representative of the Figaro found the ex-exile tranquilly smoking his pipe in one of the dismantled saloons of the grand mansion forming part of the property which he had been duped into to be his own. He bore his downfall quite as philosophically as he had borne his elevation. The rightful heirs had given him notice to quit, he sad, shrugging his shoulders ; he was quite ready to “faire son paquet,” give up possession, and take his departure ; and he only desired M now not to be disturbed again on this side ■ the grave. It is to be hoped the De Breon i family, reinstated in the full enjoyment of I their rights, will do something of a substan- « tial nature to comfort the declining nays d£j| the unlucky and innocent M. Edouard de la |j Boussiniere. j