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Show OUR EUROPEAN LETTER. (From our regular correspondent.) In no city in the world is a tale of horror more keenly appreciated than in Paris, the city of pleasure. The atrocious crime occupying the attention of the entire city, if not of the country, is thus concisely told. In 1872 Fenayrou took into his shop as apprentice, Aubert, the victim, then a lad, who won the affection of both husband and wife, and remained with them till 1874, when he had to serve his time in the army. In 1875 he returned to Paris, was attached to a hospital, and renewed his relations with the Fenayrou family, with whom he dined regularly twice a week. The intimacy grew thicker, and, extending to the Aubert family, Madame Fenayrou went in 1877 with the victim and his sister to stay with his mother for a few days in Normandy. In 1878 Aubert again entered the service of Fenayrou, but the latter, offended at his arrogance, shortly afterwards dismissed him, and forbade his wife to have further intercourse with his family, which injunction, however, she disobeyed, and guilty relations between the victim and Madame Fenayrou, according to her own version, commenced in the following year. Friends and anonymous letters revealed matters to the husband, who since 1879 had meditated plans of vengeance against his former pupil. The plan ultimately fixed upon was assassination. The husband offered to condone his wife's misconduct on condition of her joining him in the execution of his vengeance. The brother is presumed, on account of sundry gifts of money and clothes to him and his family a few days after the crime, to have been bribed. A house was hired at Chalon, a solitary place in the environs of Paris, the wife gave the victim a rendezvous there, and the husband murdered him with a hammer and walking-stick dagger. The body was shipped, conveyed in a perambulator to the Seine, and thrown over the bridge. The trial began on Wednesday at Versailles, and so eagerly did the public covet the horrible details that the people who had tickets for the exhibition-that is, the trial-took their breakfasts with them so as to be in time to enjoy the sensational evidence. There is usually some sense of shame, remorse, or despair in the most hardened criminals and the most callous spectators but all the revolting evidence in this terrible case is told on the one side and listened to by the other with a coolness that positively makes one shudder. The case, however, is so clear and the evidence so conclusive that, but for the excessive formality of French law, it might have been concluded in an hour or two, but the desire to discover "extenuating circumstances" in even the most diabolical crimes is always a feature in French trials, and tends to delay them when the evidence has no chance of being confuted. Some interesting facts are seen in the publication of the French census returns, taken in December last, but only just published. The population in France does not increase and multiply as it does in England and America. During the last six years there is only an increase of three-quarters of a million in all France, and this increase is chiefly in the large towns. The rural population remains much the same as for many years past. The entire population of France is a little under thirty-eight millions. There cannot be a doubt that the troubles the country has undergone has checked the increase of population. In France the publication of the census has caused much disappointment; but it may be questioned whether it is a subject for much regret when it is found that in Great Britain and in Germany the result of the rapid increase of population is that thousands are compelled to seek new lands, as, owing to the competition, they are unable to earn a living at home. One fo the chief reasons for the lamentation in France over the census returns is that the people fear there will be a difficulty in keeping up the physical force of the army. Certainly the tiny little warriors of France have not the stalwart appearance and vigor of their Teutonic rivals. The German and Austrian Emperors met on Wednesday, and journeyed together for some distance, ultimately parting at ?? with warm expressions of good will. They were met at the railway station by the Empress Elizabeth. There is every indication that the alliance between the two chief rulers of Germany will be closer than of old. Nothing is heard now of the Triple Alliance, which at one period exercised so great an influence in European questions. August Paris, France, Sept. 18, 1882. |