ESTERHAZY STARVING.

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 13

ESTERHAZY STARVING.

A PATHETIC LETTER. Madame Esterhazy, who some time ago obtained a divorce from the notorious major, is bringing an action for alimony against her mother, the Marquise de Nettancourt. During the hearing of the case (says the “Daily News” Paris correspondent) counsel for the plaintiff read in court the following curious letter from Major Esterhazy to his divorced wife :

I have been unable to write t° my children these last few days for want of money to buy a stamp. My physical strength is gone ; I am disheartened and penniless. I have taken but one meal within the last 48 hours, and that was in a workhouse, I have no money to buy clothes. I am shivering with cold, being unable, of cocurse, to warm myself anywhere except in the churches and the museums.. Everybody will say that this is a confession of guilt. You can say that I am starving. I have struggled hard, but my voice is by my enemies. I am without food. I shall die of want unless a bullet puts an end to it. Give many kisses to my dear children. Tell them how I love them, and say that if an awful fatality has thrown me into the abyss, that if I am dying a victim of human cowardice, I never committed the crime of which I am accused by miserable creatures who want to escape. I have had to pawn m*y wedding-ring. It was the only piece of jewellery I carried away. I kept it in spite of the divorce. I pawned it the other day, only •at the last extremity. Like every line from Esterhazy*s pen, the above is probably a mixture of truth and falsehood. As Esterhazy said in his famous letter to his nephew Christian, one must bamboozle everybody.