The Express.
London, England, 1868-07-09 00:00:00

GREECE.

ATHENS, JULY 6.

The Chamber of Deputies has been constituted.
M. Lazaretto, the ministerial candidate, has been
elected President.

(This telegram has been delayed in transmission.)

OUR PARIS LETTER.

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF CHILD
STF A LING.
(PROs ors oinr oosszsroyszyr.)
PARIS, WEDNESDAY ETMCING.

A woman was tried at the Paris Assize Court
yesterday for stealing a child under very extra-
ordinary circumstances. This is a crime of not
frequent occurrence. The last case of the kind
occurred seven years ago, when a judge's
little boy was stolen from the Tuileries gar-
dens by a girl who thought she could persuade
her lover to marry her if she could make
him believe she had a child of his. The
motive in the present case was to a certain extent
analogous; but then, as now, an indulgent jury
prone to pardon feminine vagaries pronounced a
verdict of acquittal. The prisoner placed at the
bar yesterday was a well-looking married woman,
24 years old, named Marie Emingeard, who,
before her arrest lived with her husband, a
man of 34, at Easel in the department
of the Correze. The spouses carried on the busi-
ness of rush-bottomed chair makers, and were in
very good circumstances for their station in life.
They were married in 1864, and though they had
frequent quarrels, never ceased to live together ex-
cept during some months in 1866, when the wife
had a situation in Paris. They had no child, and the
wife fancied that her sterility was the reason why
she and her husband did not get on well together.
Impressed with this idea she one day said to him
that while she was in service in Paris she had been
waned of a little girl ; that she had been afraid
to tell him lest he might fancy that he was
not the father, and that she had left the
child with an aunt in Paris. The husband, so far
from being angry, said he would like to have the
child brought home at once, and sent his wife to
Paris, with plenty of money in her pocket, to fetch
it. Her idea was to go to the Foundling Hospital,
and ask to adopt a child ; but when she
found she could not do this without showing
her " papers," which would have led to inquiry
and discovery, she resolved to steal one. She
compounded with her conscience by the theory
that if she took away the child of a very poor
person, with the thorough determination to
bring it up well, she would in the main
be doing a good action. The day after
she arrived in Paris she saw three children
at play on the Boulevard de la Gare, near the
Orleans Railway-station. The eldest (in charge
of the two) was a boy of 9; the second a boy of
31; and the third, who she thought would suit
her purpose, a little girl twenty months old. She
made friends with the children, treated them
at a cake shop, and then, to draw them
further away from their home, went to
a restaurant where they had coffee and " a
ha'porth of soda water." Afterwards, going still
further off, she bought a frock for the little girl.
Finally, she gave the two boys the slip, and took
the child to her lodgings, where she
slept with it. The next morning she
was on her way to the Orleans railway
station with the stolen child in her arms, when,
by an almost miraculous coincidence, the child's
eldest sister, 14 years old, who was going to a
shop where she worked, recognised the infant,
and with great firmness told the woman that unless
she brought her home immediately she would
call the police and have her arrested.
The woman Emingeerd offered the girl a bribe of
a watch and 40 franca to let her go, but the girl
refused to part with her prisoner. The parents,
who had been in the greatest distress at the loss
of their infant, were Germans, named
Bellinger, living on the Boulevard de
rilopitaL They detained the woman