FORTUNE-TELLING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 6, 28 April 1876, Page 3

FORTUNE-TELLING.

It is not in England a'one that the simple fall victims to the wiles of fortunetellers or sorceresses, anil a trial which Itas just taken place in the Department of the Aisne shows that the peasants of the North of France are as gullible as the most credulous of English cottagers or servants. Madame Lambert, who low been condemned to two months' imprisonment, did not resort to what may be called high art m the practice of her profession, for, discarding mesmerism and somnambulism, she confined herself to fortune-telling with u pack of cards. A peasant girl was anxious to know whether her "young man" would fulfil his promise to marry her, and Madame Lambert, on consulting the cards, found that he would be " involved in a lawsuit about a dark girl." This annoyed the peasant girl, who happened to Ik: a blonde, but Madame Lambert reassured her by saying that this catastrophe could be averted by boiling a sheep's heart in holy water and sticking thirteen pins into it. I"pon another occasion Madame Lambert predicted that a death would occur in the girl's family, and a few days afterwards her brother was killed. She only i»aid Madame Lambert threepence or fotirpcnce for each consultation, ami was not, therefore, so good a client as a railway porter, who, finding that some money which had been left him by will was not forthcoming, asked her to write for it. She did so without success, but on consulting the cards told him that it would be paid the next day, and so it wr.:i, much to the delight of the railway porter, who " stood " her a breakfast and sjave her twenty francs as a fee. A retired farmer, called Potier, met Madame Lnmbirt at a tavern, and on dealing the card.-; she declared that he had lost his wife's affections. Thi3 witness ingenuously declares: " I did not want to hear any more, and left the room." But Madame Lambert was not to be got rid of so easily, and she ga : ncd his wife's confidence by foretelling the precise hour at which he would have his next epileptic attack, gratifying her spite at the same time by saying that the faithless Potier had sent a fair yonng lady forty francs to buy a bonnet. Another woman consulted her to ' know the meaning of a dream in which she had seen her son riding on a camel with a monkey perched on his head, and it need scarcely be said that Madame Lamtart was at no loss to explain this as a portent of evil omen. These are a few of the cases alleged against her, and they prove that human nature is much the same ..n both sides of the Channel, and that education has not said its last word amongst the French peasantry. The accused, in tier line of defence, adopted the same line which is taken as a rule by English for-tune-tellers. She amused herself and her acquaintances by consulting the cards. She never made any charge, but if people liked to give her a triUe, why should she refuse it; and, moreover, the witnesses who bad been called were persons who uwed her a grudge.