A SCULPTORS REVENGE.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 168, 21 July 1908, Page 2

A SCULPTORS REVENGE.

An interesting trial for wife murder was begun at the Court of Assizes at Naples on May 18 (says the correspondent of the ' Daily Telegraph ') . The accused is one of the best-known men m the Italian artistic world, the sculptor Filippo Cifariello. The story of this eminent artist is an extremely painful one. He is nbw a wealthy man, but when lie began his career he was not m very enviable financial circumstances. However, he worked with enthusiasm and with faith m the future. During a visit to Ro,me he became deeply enamored of a music-hall singer, Blanche Brochat, a Frenchwoman from Lyons, who, left a widow at an early age, had gone on the stage m order to support herself and her mother. She returned the affection of Cifariello, for whose sake she gave up a rich young German, who was ready to marry her. Sculptor and singer were married, and spent a few liappy months together. Cifariello was intensely proud of the physical beauty of his wife, from whom he modelled a wonderfully fine statue. Between the couple, however, differences began to arise, and these increased when the sculptor was appointed art director to a porcelain factory m Germany, with a salary of 1,000 marks a month. - Cifariello, now m fairly good circumstances, gave himself lip to hard wotli, gaining fume and money. But his home life was not happy, and there were continual scenes between husband and wife, caused principally by the latter's extravagance, while she perpetually .charged the sculptor with avariciousness. Things came to such a pass that the wife eventually left her husband and returned to the stage, and accepted an engagement to sing at Buenos Ayres. Cifariella became ill through grief, and returned to Naples, and finally was able to prevail^ upon his wife to rejoin him. She pursed^ him tenderly, and he recovered his health to a certain extent, but suffered occasionally from acute neurasthenia, which rendered him extremely excitable and hasty. At last, tired of his outbursts of temper, the wife betrayed him, and became the lover of a Naples lawyer. One morning the scu'ptor discovered his wife's hiding place, and shot her with a revolver. He was immediately arrested, and is now undergoing trial.