The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-03-17
A FIENDISH MOTHER


Practices q Course of Unheard- of Cruelty
on Her Offspring.
NJ Zola's theories as to the brutality of
the lower classes seem to be confirmed by
the discovery of fresh case Of inhumanity
across the Seine in the Rue de Sevres, one
of the thoroughfares of the Quarter Latin,
says a Paris correspondent of the Pittsburg
Dispatch. Living there with her only child,
boy. Marie Chapoteaut, the divorced wife
of a Belgian workman named Nystin,
picked up a precarious livelihood by sewing.
Marie, now aged %. is an unusually pretty
brunette, but her good looks have someW hat
faded since she played fancy-free and limo
cent on her fathers farm near the old uni
versity town of Louvain, in Belgium The
time at last came, however, when Pere
Chapoteaut said that flirting must cease and
the real business of life begin. He proposed
that Marie should marry Jean Nystin. a
workman skilled in the weayer'S craft, and
foreman of a large factory.
She therefore submitted TO the inevitable
and bided her time. After few years that
saw the birth of their only child, Jean had
an unusually tempting offer to remove to
tie French capital. There he took posi-
ton similar to the one he held in Louvain,
but far better paid. She had not been long
in the gay capital before Marie had lost her
heart and for the first time fallen seriously
in love with Paul Lemaitre, perhaps one of
the most worthless youths that had ever
been sent Up from the provinces to take his
degree at the College dc France.
The amour had lasted several months
when prying neighbor placed Jean on his
guard and the lovers, unaware of his sus-
picions, gave him ample opportunities to
preepitate the scene that he did not hesitate
TO make. The result was that the matter
was soon adjudged in tho courts and Jean
was left tree 10 mate with some more
worthy woman.
By some extraordinary oversight, how
ever, poor little Pierre was left in the Gus
tody of mis- mother whose treasure of love
had all been expended when she poured ont
the wealth of her affections upon her lover.
1t would not have been strange if she had
abandoned her offspring by the wayside or
thrown it into the Seine. or disposed of it in
some other way. but the intensity of her
feeling against the chlld'S father melted her
to a more ngeniously fiendish revenge
She began course of systematic cruelty
that would seem improbable If found de-
tailed in the pages of blOod-and-t thunder
romance. Suspending her victim by one
arm to the ceiling, having first carefully
gagged 1t to stitie its shriekS, she would
burn its body with hot irons aud cash its
tender flesh with scissors.
Pierre was so enieebled by this torture
that he was more dead than alive when
found, which he would not have been but
for the meTeSt accident. Smoke was discOv-
cred coming out of Marie's apartments in
her absence, aud the neighbors burst open
the door. There they found the poor child
in a small closet, on pile of rags, and al
though Pierre was at first afraid to speak,
the good-hearted commeres of the adjoining
rooms by deft questioning soon drew from
him the dreadful story.
To apprise the police was the work of
few moments, and the gendarmes soon ar
rived and took possession of the premises.
consgning the unfortunate child. whose
body was mass of burns and putrefying
sores, to the tender care of good sisters in
the Hospital des Enfants
When Marie returned from a ramble in
the Luxembourg with some Of her student
friends an immense crowd had gathered in
front of the building. and had she been
recognized as the inhuman mother she
would no doubt have been torn to pieces on
the SPOT