Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1879-03-24
THE MANIA OF A COUNTESS,
A Woman Who ROams the World In
Search Of Charley ROSES.
Chicngo Times parls Lelter.l

Chicago Times Paris letter.
On the Boulevard Malesherbes,
which bears the same relation to Paris
that Prairie avenue or Calumet does
to Chicago, a young couple somewhat
new to Paris had just taken the place
of concierge and butler respectively.
One afternoon as their little boy OF
four was playing in the passage on a
level with the street, by which all
houses here are entered, a coupe
stopped in front of the house and a
well-dresSed lady descended. The in
FAINT was attracted by the noise and
ran out. The woman stopped and
! fondled it and carried it to the car
riage and drove off. The mother, in
the narrow ground floor allotted to the
concierge, saw nothing of this. A
neighbours servant had seen it, but
supposed it was all right. Had this
happened in America it would have
been a Charley Ross " affair. They
manage these things better in France, -
as Lawrence Sterne was fond of saying.
The mother missed her infant in due
time. She went up and down the
street in no great uneasiness, but
finding no sign she grew alarmed.
Her alarm became terror as the lights
of the wide street began to burn in
the early winter evening. BY chance
the servant who had seer the cab was
encountered. She told the story. The
police were called in, and assured the
terrified mother that she would o
have her infant. One day passed and
no infant two days, then two weeks,
and the mother was summoned to the
station of the district. She was shown
into a private room, and there was
her small boy in the arms of a strange
lady. The mother made for the lad
but the lady pushed her away.
What" said the dismayed mother.
p" am | not to have my child?"
The policeman spoke up Madame
la Comptesse claims the child as her
own"
"It is false" said the mother sit
is my own. Come to me, Paul"
The child made an effort, but was
restrained and broke into sobS. The
policeman interfered. He saw a much
more practical way of deciding the
question of maternity han Solomon
in all his wisdom. He commanded
the child to be left free to choose.
The little boy ran with a gurgle of de-
light to the mother. Madame la
Comptesse will consider herself under
arrest EN- surveillance until further
orders, and will not attempt to leave
the country"
How had the infant been found?
First, every hack in the district was
examined as to its work on that par
ticular afternoon, and in time this re-
duced the problem to which OF a dozen
or more ladies had driven with chill
dren that day. Then the problem
came down to lady living in a modest
quarter of the city who had returned
home with an infant and had immedi-
ately left the place and had not been
seen since. Then the history of this
parsonage was looked up. She was
the Countess Lomenin, an English
woman, who had separated from her
husband. Then the departures from
Paris were traced, and so surely that
within three days the train she had
taken was known in another the
point she had gotten Of-Calais and
crossed to Dover; then in England the
work was slow and promised to be
hopeless, when 10, the bird relighted
in the same bush, though not in the
same cage. She had returned to Paris
and taken quarters elsewhere. She
was visited by the police and vowed
that the child was her own and vows
still that it is, and the case is to be
tried in the courts. The develop
ments meanwhile about the countess
illustrate not only the pOrtentous
espionage of the police on every man,
woman and child in the capital, but
reveal some extraordinary phases of
Paris life. The woman, it seems, has
a mania for seizing children and put
ting them in asylums for infants, to be
reared to certain creeds. So far as
shown she is not mercenary in her
madness, but simply bent on making
monks Of such promising babies as she
can seize. 1t is no difficult matter to
seize children in this way either in the
more d%ensely crowded pUrlieus, where
the poverty stricken parents make
little ado over the loss of their starv-
ing little ones, for though, as a rule,
French people deny all their ordinary
characteristics and display a passionate
tenderness for their children, in some
cases they are not only Indifferent, but
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