The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-06-26 00:00:00

AMPLE MATERIALS FOR A NOVEL.

(From " Hortensius ; or, The Advocate," by W. Forsyth, Esq.)
One of the most remarkable cases in which D'Aguessau
was engaged as counsel at the bar was the following :
Louis de la Pivardiere, a gentleman of a good family
but decayed estate, married in 1687 a widow named Da
Menon, who possessed a small property near Narbonne.
The union was not a happy one ; and De la Pivardiere
began to treat his wife with neglect, who found consola-
tion in the attentions of Charost, the Abbe of Mizeray.
The husband frequently absented himself from home, and
while at Auxerre on one occasion he met with the daugh-
ter of a man who held the office of huisseur in the town,
and fell desperately in love with her. Concealing the fact
that he had a wife living, he married this new object of
his attachment; and, on the death of the father, which
soon happened, he succeeded to the same appointment
which the latter had held. For two years De la Pivar-
diere lived in undisturbed union with his Auxerre wife,
paying every six months a visit to his property at Nar-
bonne, where he drew his rents, and then went away,
meeting with no opposition to his departure from his first
wife, at whose house indeed he generally found the abbe
an inmate on his return. Matters continued in this state
until information was given to the lady at Narbonne, that
the cause of her husband's frequent absence was the fact
of his possessing another wife at Auxerre. Though she
had ceased to love him, and in all probability had for a
long time herself indulged in an illicit passion, this dis-
covery inflamed her jealousy, and she only waited for his
appearance to upbraid him with his infidelity. It hap-
pened that he came to Narbonne very soon after his wife
had received the intelligence. He arrived at his chateau
on the evening of the festival of Notre Dame, in August.
1697, and found that a brilliant party had assembled in
the saloons to do honour to the day. His sudden appa-
rition disconcerted the guests, and his wife received him
with such marked coldness and aversion, that the com-
pany, who were ignorant of the true cause, could not for-
bear expressing their surprise. It may be easily imagined
that their mirth was effectually damped, and the party
soon broke up, leaving the husband and wife to an agree-
able tete a tete. No sooner had they gone, than she
broke out into passionate reproaches, and told him to go
to his new wife and ask her, if he wanted an explanation
of the reason of her own coldness and displeasure. After
a violent quarrel, De la Pivardiere retired to bed, and his
wife then locked the door where one of the maid servants
slept, and removed two of the others, and her two youth-
ful children, to an apartment at the top of the house
which they had not occupied before. During the night a
knocking was heard at the gate of the mansion, and when
one of the female servants went down to inquire who was
there, a man asked whether the Sieur de la Pivardiere had
arrived, and being told that he had, he immediately dis-
appeared. Next day, La Pivardiere was not to be found,
although his horse and riding apparel remained at the
chateau. Some time elapsed, and still nothing was heard
about him, and the remarkable circumstances attending
his return sharpened the suspicions of the neighbourhood.
At last officers of justice arrived at the house to investi-
gate the matter, and drew up a proces verbal. They
found the mattress and bed on which La Pivardiere had
slept stained with blood, and in the cellar a deep trench
dug about the size of a man's body, although no corpse
was there when they examined it. In addition to these
and other circumstances, the, two maid servants, whom
Madame de la Pivardiere had placed on the night in ques-
tion in the attic, deposed positively to the fact of the
murder. They declared that their mistress had intro-
duced two valets of the Abbe de Mizeray into the cham-
ber of her husband, and that they had assassinated him.
And the daughter of La Pivardiere, a girl of the age of
nine years, deposed that she heard in the middle of the
night the voice of her father crying out, " 0 ! my God,
have pity on me !" What proof could seem more com-
plete than this ? The abbe was arrested, and the servants
were confronted with him ; but in his presence they hesi-
tated, faltered, and at last openly retracted and disavowed
all that they had previously sworn. No sooner, however,
was he removed, than they reiterated their former state-
ment, and on being again confronted with him, they per-
tinaciously adhered to it.
While matters were in this state, a most unexpected
turn was given to the proceedings. It was confidently
asserted that La Pivardiere was alive, and several wit-
nesses came forward and swore that they had seen him at
Chateauroux and at Issodun, a few days after the time
when he was said to have been murdered at Narbonne.
Upon this, she who was either his wife or his widow, and
upon whom such a load of suspicion rested, applied to the
court for a warrant of arrest against her husband, that the
fact of his existence might be duly proved. Two months
elapsed before Pivardiere again appeared, but lie was then
seen at Romarantin, and, being recognised, he was imme-
diately seized and carried to the prison where the two
maid servants were confined, in order that he might be
identified. They, however, both declared that he was not
their missing master, and that they did not know the in-
dividual before them. In this perplexity the procureur du
roi demanded his detention that the mystery might be
cleared up ; but the authorities refused to interfere, and
he went away from the place, leaving the fact of Pivar-
diere's existence involved in greater mystery than ever.
Not long afterwards the accused partien were put upon
their trial for the supposed murder, and an order was is-
sued for the arrest of the individual who was said to be
La Pivardiere wherever he might be found. He did not,
however, require to be searched for, but voluntarily came
forward, and, appearing before the procureztr at Romo-
rantin, he declared that he was De la Pivardiere, and
avowed his double marriage. What follows is singular
enough. Instead of being immediately arrested and tried
for bigamy, he made a formal demand that his identity
should be first established by legal proof in a civil process ;
and it was in this stage of the affair that D'Aguesseau was
employed as counsel ; and he had to prove that the person
whose suit was before the court, was the same De la Pi-
vardiere whose supposed murder was the subject of the
criminal trial which was then pending. This he did in a
very elaborate argument, in which he commented with
masterly skill upon the conflict of probabilities and evi-
dence in this extraordinary case. The result was that the
identity was established, and the surviving servant who
had given evidence as to the fact of the murder, was con-
demned to make the amends honorable, to be whipped,
branded with a fleur-de-lys, and banished for ever from
the place where the parliament was sitting. The accused
parties were, of course, set at liberty.

FLEXIBLE IVORY.-It has been long known that in
subjecting bones to the action of hydrochloric acid, the
phosphate of lime which forms one of their component
parts is extracted. Bones preserved in this manner re-
tain their original form and acquire great flexibility. It
is by this process that M. Charriere, the maker of surgi-
cal instruments in Paris, softens the ivory of which he
makes use to manufacture flexible tubes, probes and other
instruments. These pieces, after receiving the required
form and polish, are steeped either entirely or partially in
acid diluted with water, where they remain as long as re-
quired. The ivory, after having undergone this prepara-
tion, becomes supple, flexible, elastic, and assumes rather
a yellowish colour. In the course of drying, it again
becomes hard and inflexible; but the flexibility of the
ivory may be restored by Netting, either by surrounding
it with a piece of wet linen or by placing sponge in the
cavities of the pieces. Some pieces of ivory have been
kept in a flexible state in the acidulated water for eight
days ; they were neither changed nor injured, nor too
much softened,—they had acquired no taste nor any dis-
agreeable smell. The preparation of flexible ivory may
give rise to various useful applications of it in the arts or
manufactures.—Patent Journal.

GEORGE STEPHENSON IN HIS l'ouTu.—He always re-
garded time as precious, and carefully turned every mi-
nute to account. During the colliery night shifts he took
his first lessons in arithmetic. When he had worked his
sums on a slate, he sent them off next morning to a
schoolmaster in the neighbourhood to correct, who in turn
sent him new questions to answer. For this service the
eager scholar sent his master the humble tribute of four-
pence per week. The rest of his time he occupied, during
the night-shifts, in cleaning the pitmen's clocks and
watches, for which he was paid. He also cut the pit-
men's clothes out, and gave instructions in the art
of " cutting out " to the pitmen's wives, usually
not very handy at such sort of work ; and it is said
that to this day there are pitmen's wives at Killing-
worth, cutting out clothes according to the instructions
then given them by George Stephenson. He also made
shoes in those lone nights by the engine fire ; and occa-
sionally made presents of them to the poor relations of
his wife and their children. He turned his ready hand to
anything. Among others of his works was a sun-dial
still fixed over the door of the house he lived in while at
Killingworth ; and, to the last day of his life, he felt a
pride at the sight of that sun-dial. Not long before his
death, while surveying the line of the Newcastle and
Berwick Railway, he drove a professional friend some-
what out of his way to have an admiring look at the dial.
—Eliza Cook's Journal.