The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-31 00:00:00

FRANCE.

An important trial to recover damages for per-
sonal injuries caused by accident has just taken
place before the Civil Tribunal in Paris. In the
month of July, 1865, the Prince of Valentinois, a
younger son of the Prince de Monaco, while in the
playground of the school attached to the chapel of
St. Mesmin, near Orleans, of which he is a pupil,
threw a pebble in sport at another boy named Caf-
farelli, but, missing him, struck in the eye a young
man named Yvonneau, aged 22, who was preparing
at the same establishment to enter ecclesiastical
orders. The injury was of a most serious kind, and
resulted in a total loss of sight in that eye, although
the young man was under surgical treatment for a
year. He had been forced to abandon his intended
career in the Church, and had even been refused em-
ployment by a railway company in consequence of his
partial defect of vision. M. Yvonneau now brought
an action to recover damages, demanding a sum of
15,000 fr. for loss of time, surgical treatment, &c.,
and a life pension of 6,000 fr. a year in addition.
The Prince of Monaco did not deny his responsibi-
lity, but considered the amount asked for exagge-
rated, alleging that the blindness had arisen from al-
leging that the blindness had arisen from a defect of
vision from which Yvonneau had suffered since his
birth ; the Prince offered a total sum of 10,000 fr.,
which he considered would be sufficient to indemnify
the plaintiff. The court appointed M. Tardieu and
two other medical men to examine the eye, and their
report confirmed the defence put forward by the
Prince, that the loss of sight did not proceed from
the accident, although at the same time showing
that the infirmity from which M. Yvonneau had ori-
ginally suffered might have been cured by a proper
treatment, but in consequence of the wound
was now irremediable. The Court, taking into
consideration all the circumstances, condemned the
Prince to pay a sum of 10,000 f , in addition to
2,000 f., which M. Yvonneau bad already received,
and also to constitute on the latter an annual pen-
, sion of 1,200 fr. The defendant was likewise ordered
to pay the costs of the suit.
A man named Tchamatekine, head groom to the
Emperor of Russia, while passing yesterday across
the Place Bcauvau, was knocked down by the horses
of a carriage belonging to the Marquis de Latour-
Maubourg. He received some rather serious in-
juries, and was removed to the city hospital in the
Faubourg St. Denis.
The bulletin of the Paris Observatory gives the
following as the atmospheric situation yesterday :
" The barometer, since Tuesday, has risen over nearly
the whole of Europe, except at Vienna, where it has
fallen 2mm. Strong pressures extend from St.
Petersburg to Algeria. The minimum was observed
this morning at Nairn (Scotland), where the mercury
reached 753 mm. ; and the maximum, at Vienna, being
768tnin. Rain is falling in Ireland. The winds
are in general moderate ; they blow from between
S.E. and N.W. in the north and west of Europe ;
from between N.E. and S.E. on the Mediterranean
coasts of France and Spain ; and are very variable
in Central Europe and Italy. The S.E. wind was
strong this morning at Bordeaux and Perpignan."—
In Paris yesterday the weather was most brilliant ;
the temperature high but not too oppressive. At
three in the afternoon the thermometer marked 28
Centigrade (83 2.5 Fahrenheit).