The Express.
London, England, 1864-08-13 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(nom ou& owl CORRESPONDENT.)
PAEIS, FRIDAY EVENING.

The " holydays" have arrived and the French
papers are full of the " breaking-up" discourses.
The scholars are loaded with prizes and laudations,
the masters are decorated with the much coveted
red riband of the Legion of Honour, and ao univer-
sal contentment prevails. Politics are put aside for
the moment and the Parisian world is bent upon
giving itself up to unalloyed enjoyment. The city
is being magnificently decorated, and as Paris is
unrivalled in its public fetes, there is no reason to
doubt that the most sanguine expectations will be
fulfilled and surpassed on Monday next. And why
should it not be a glorious display ? Never, the
imperial journals tell us, did France occupy such a
commanding position as at this moment ; the de-
fender of the faith, the only nation, in fact (as the
Emperor observed), that protects religion for its
own sake, the dispenser of crowns, the terror of the
oppressor, the hope and refuge of the op-
pressed, the munificent patron of the arts and
sciences—in short, a light to lighten the nations of
the earth and to scatter blessings in the path of all
peoples. flo let the 15th of August testify the
gratitude and devotion of a nation to a prince who
has done such great things.
There was • trial on Thursday which will be
read with some interest in London, where I believe
many of the Russian rouble notes have been offered
for sale. It appears that • Pole, named Frankowski,
aged 29, representing himself to be an agent of the
Polish National Government, and a Frenchman
named Bourban, aged 38, were charged with
falsifying and negotiating certain credit notes of
the Credit Foncier of Warsaw, each of the value
of three thousand roubles. Another Frenchman,
named Faucheux, who has absconded, was also
included in the indictment. In June, 1863, the
director of the deposit-office in the public treasury
of Warsaw and two of the superior clerks absconded,
taking with them credit notes of the Credit Foncier
of Warsaw to the amount of 3,200,000 roubles,
but leaving in their place a list of the
numbers of the notes abstracted, and a
receipt in the name of the Polish National
Government, under whose orders they had acted.
The Russian government took immediate measures
to prevent the negotiation of these securities by
transmitting their numbers to all the capitals of
Europe. Nothing was heard of the notes till last
March, when four of them were presented to the
Messrs. Rothschilds' for payment, bearing the
numbers 15,810, 15,852, 14,154, 15,982. As none
of these numbers were in the list furnished by the
Russian government, the Rothschilds negotiated
them without the slightest hesitation, and after-
wards transmitted them to one of their correspon-
dents in Germany. The notes were soon returned,
with the observation that they really formed part
of those stolen, but that all the numbers had been
falsified by the addition of the figure 1. The value
of two of the notes which the Rothachilds
had cashed for an agent, employed by the
accused Fancheux, was at once refunded, and •
suit is still pending for the recovery of
the amount of the other two from M. Huguet,
a banker. The inquiry that was instituted
led to the discovery that Bourban and Faucheux
had received the notes from Frankowski.
Warrants were in consequence issued against
them, when Frankowski and Bourban were
arrested, but Faucheux has succeeded in baffling
all the efforts of the police. In court the pri-
soner Frankowski maintained that he did not
alter the numbers, and that he was not aware they
had been altered. Dr. Galingowski deposed that
he, as a member of the Polish committee of the
national debt, had entrusted the notes to Fran-
kowski for negotiation, and that the numbers bad I
not then been falsified. He added that tit)
months later he had been instructed by the Polish
National Government to withdraw the notes from
Frankowski, but that the latter refused to give'
them up. There was, however, no reason to sup-
pose that he had ever embezzled any of the funds
he had received from the national government. I
After hearing counsel for the defence the jury
retired to deliberate, and in half an hour they
returned into court with a verdict acquitting
Frankowski of forgery but finding him guilty,
with extenuating circumstances, of negotiating the
notes knowing them to have been falsified. The
court condemned 'him to the minimum punish-
ment, two years' imprisonment and a tine of 100
franca. Bourban was acquitted as having acted
without any guilty knowledge.
There was a brilliant entertainment given on
Wednesday night at Vincennes by the artillery. It
combined instruction and pleasure, and was similar
in all respects to the annual fite given by the Royal
Artillery in India on the last day or night of their
anneal practice. The pyrotechnic building at Vin-
cennes was tastefully decorated in military fashion.