Show ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY A Young Girl in the Grave and Her Lover a Life Convict A trial which has just taken place at St i Etienne France has brought to light details of a dramatic affair In January last a I young man threw himself from a window on the second floor of the Hotel de 1Europe at St Etienne He was little hurt by the fall I but when taken up he was found to have I fired a shot from a revolver hi his mouth and stabbed himself in the breast with a sword I cane In the chamber from which he had thrown himself was found the body of a young girl who had been shot in the head while asleep The young man refused to give his name or that of his companion but said that they were lovers and had resolved to die together drawn to death by a poetic impulse impule He recovered and the story of their lives was revealed by the police investigation The young man named Auray was the son of respectable parents at Beaujon Rhone He was only twentyfour years of age but was already afflicted with what has been called la maladie du siecle a heated imagination imagi-nation with an inordinate thirst for wealth and material pleasures ending in morbid disgust for life and depression of spirits from envy and disappointment He had been a medical student and had performed his mitaI service at the hospitals On recovering re-covering his liberty in August last he was absorbed by a monomania for suicide and as he had inherited from his father a sum of 7000 or 8000 francs he resolved to die after having been loved by a woman who had never been possessed by any one but himself He went to Lyons in search of his ideal and discovered it one evening at the theater in a young girl Margherite Vagnair next to whom he was seated followed her when she left with her friends and learned that she belonged to an honest family of the working class He succeeded in mailing her I acquaintance and afterward they eloped together to-gether To dazzle the young girl Auray represented re-presented himself as the son of parents immensely im-mensely rich andhe commenced purchasing purchas-ing for her elegant dresses and then sent I back her simple clothing to her friends as he would not allow her to possess anything I that had belonged to her parents They first came to Paris leading a life of pleasure and when near the end of his resources went to SaintEtienne and stayed at the Hotel de 1 Europe under the name of M and Mme Merat Their idyl was at an end and the young woman then learned the melancholy melan-choly reality of their situation and his resolution to commit suicide He tried to persuade her to return to her friends but she determined to die with him threatening that i he refused she would throw herself into the Rhonc All she asked was that she should not suffer in dying Auray for that reason concealed from her the moment I when he intended to carry out his design and fired four shots from a revolver through her head while she was sleeping He has survived his own injuries but the shot he I discharged in his own mouth carried away his jaw bone and he can now only take food with an artificial palate He was tried for the murder of the girl gland gl-and this monomaniac of suicide will now bear the most terrible of punishments for he has been condemned to drag on his wretched remorseful existence the court having life sentenced him to hard labor for |