The Express.
London, England, 1866-11-19 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(runt OUR owl coanspoirDionr.)

PARIS. SUNDAY EVIIIING.

The Moniteur announced the other day that
Count de Bismarck was about to return to Berlin
and resume the " direction of affairs." It has since
been stated that many international matters of the
highest importance await his personal superinten"
dente. It now appears that the state of his health
will prevent him from attending to business, at any
rate till the end of this month, and perhaps longer.
His malady is of a highly nervous character.
Although years and hard work are visible in his
countenance, he is physically almost as strong as
ever. He is able to take plenty of exercise, and
riding and walking are prescribed by his physicians.
But mental work deprive* him of sleep, brings on
nervous fever, and in the opinion of his medical
advisers might bring on a congestion or even a
softening of the brain. If this account be true, it
must be hoping against hope to expect that the
great Prussian minister will be better able to
attend to business a few weeks or a few months
hence than he is now.

The Court of Caseation has just solemnly decided
an appeal from the Imperial Court of Besancon,
that a man who went out with a gun in his hand
wolf hunting, and who, seeing a stir in a thicket,
tired and killed a deer, was not subject to punish-
ment for sporting without a license. The public
prosecutor contended that in cases of contravention,
which, unlike crimes and misdemeanours, imply
nothing ma/urn in se, the question of intention
could not be gone into, and that when the act pro-
hibited was proved to have been committed a
condemnation followed of course. The court,
however, said that, although good faith was not an
excuse for a contravention, it could not be com-
mitted without a voluntary act, which it held to be
absent in the case of shooting at a wolf and killing
a deer.

The great smoking on railways question, which
just now excites great interest in England, was tiff
subject of an adjudication in a Paris court of law
this last week. A housemaid, Mdlle. Sydouie,
while travelling from Ermont to Paris in a third-
class carriage, remonstrated with a fellow passenger
named Rousseau for smoking a pipe. His only answer
was a whiff of tobacco iu her face. Thereupoi
she knocked the pipe out of his mouth and bra(
it ; he responded by a box on the oar. It word(
have gone hard with Rousseau had Mdlle. Sydoni
prosecuted him for assault and battery ; but eh(
magnanimously condoned that outrage in consider
ation of the provocation she had given by breakim
his pipe, and contented herself with laying an in
formation against him for the simple fact of smol
ing in a railway carriage. He pleaded that he weal
into a third c!ass carriage on purpose to smoke
his ease, and argued that anybody who objectedtk
smoking ought to travel first-class. But the court
told him he was wrong in his law, and that thin'
class passengers were as much protected from tin
annoyance of smoking as first-class passengers.
The act applicable to the case is dated so far bacl
as 1846 ; but subsequently passengers have beef
invested with a dispensing power, and may, whr
the directors of the railway do not object, alio.
smoking if they please. A single objection, hol
ever, renders the old act operative, and M. Rouasea3
was tined Mfr.
It is reported that M. Glais Dizoin, the opposi
tion deputy, has just inherited a fortune
400,000 fr.

M. Lecca, the officer of Zouavcs, who killed M.
Seguin in a duel, is to be tried by court-martial.

WEATHER REPORT.-(THIS DAY.)

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 8 LE.