The New York herald., 1876-10-03
A Blind Murderer.

There are grim dramatic elements in the
horrible tragedy which took place in this city
on Sunday night, when q blind French musi-
clan killed his infant son, fatally wounded
his wife and shot himself dead. Jules
Blanc, the murderer and suicide, who leaves
letter accusing himself alone, had, it APP
pears, been tenderly reared, but loved
lite Of adventure, and followed this i'm
pulse by leading a seafaring life until disease
came and yelled his eyes with a
'drop serene" He was married, and
as the blind professors income was but
scanty his wife became chorus singer at
the Academy Of Music and afterward fol-
lowed the rollicking fortunes of Mile.
AimGe's opera boufe, occasionally getting
small parts. The blind and disappointed
man and the light-hearted young woman,
with her head full of airy tunes, were not
calculated to pull pleasantly along through
life. So weird, mocking picture steals be-
fore our eyes. The cleaning of many lights.
the false glitter of the life of the stage in its
widest freaks, the ring of the merry chorus,
the intoxication of tumultuous applause
are in the foreground. Back Of that we
see the blind husband cropping through
his little room, prey to the bitterest
Of pangs. He is jealous and he is blind.
Jealousy does not want eyes to picture its
fancied wrongs but it needs all the senses
to blot the visions out. II have loved my
wife and she loved me- too," he wrote, but
the thought that must have wrought most on
his disordered mind was can she, the young,
the gay, no doubt the tempted, still love me,
the poor and blind? How the blacklist
thoughts distorted Their selves into fendish
shapes we can dimly imagine. There was for
him no awaking from this nightmare of the
brain. He was blind, and he could never
hope to start from his imaginings as Richard
springs from the rack whereon he has tossed
in the blindness of sleep to cry
Have mercy, Jesu Sof did but dream
Ben Jonson, in his best comedy, gives
picture of husband, jealous without cause,
who asks, while his fingers tremble, (Which
of them kissed my wife first ?" There we can
laugh, for we know he is q victim to busy
brain, and can be undeceived. Jules Blanc
u Luc60
thoughts trooped to his brain, but he felt
that with his wife in all the Fictitious dazzle
of her life, amid Establishments and fat
tery-in the furnace Of the passions, az il
were-he had no safeguard for his honor: he
was blind. Wretch that he was he never
dreamed once that he could trust the woman
who washed the paint from her cheeks and
stole from the stage to their humble home
where her child and her husband waited.
He was blind to the world without and all
eyes for the grinning demon within. Cow
ard, he could not trust as he could not
watch; and the demon told him he could
murder. To look from him and his bloody
work to the picture of John Milton, old and
blind, and enduring his domestic infelici-
ties while he gave to the world the incom-
parable fruits of his great poetic soul, Is
like shifting the glance from hell to heaven.
Happy it is that such crime as the blind
musicians can be oontrasted before weak
humanity with the great blind singers
blameless life.