The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-10-08
A womAN's SECRET OF BEAUTY.
Baths in the Blood of Maidens, for
Which Hundreds Were Put to
Death.
MON the Pittsburg Telegrapl

From the Pittsburg Telegraph,
Paris, Sept. 11.-Paris has Just been
edited by a work treating of the life and
proceedings of a lady of the sixteenth
century, who carried her care for sher
beauty to the very utmost limits. This ais
not a fairy tale, but a sober, historical
fact, backed by many official documents
of undOubted authenticity, and the lady's
amiable weakness is described with a
wealth of detail and forcible simplicity of
description that is apt to turn the reader
sick.
The lady in question was named Eliza
beth Bathory, Comtesse Nadasdy, who
married at the age of 10, in 1895, Com te
Francois Nadasdy who was not of too
mild a nature himself, as, when his wife
complained one day that her maid had
been impertinent, lie ordered the erring
handmaiden stripped, smeared with
honey, and laid on wasps nest. from the
effects of which gentle admonition she
subsequently died. The Countess Eliza
beth was left q widow in 1904, and began
simply at first to try to keep up the
rigorous discipline enforced by her late
husband. Unhappily, one day ashe struck
her waiting maid. and 50 wounded her
that her mistress hands were covered
with blood. When they were washed the
countess remarked that her bands were
whittier and the skin more supple and
firm, and thenceforward her naturally
cruel nature was spurred by the frenzied
desire to retain her waning beauty at
any price
ODD though 1t may seem in the present
day, she used as a cosmetic from that
time on a bath of human blood, and the
tradition eRoes that anything so surperb
IN II brilliant fairness as her complexion
cannot be imagined She murdered all
her waiting maids, one by one, aided by
hnp Tf..Ia l. 80
being one of them. and when she could
get no women to enter her service she
coOlly sent her emissaries to kidnap the
peasant girls of the neigh borhood. At
last, however, the CHASTITY scandal rose
to such pitch that even Hungary in the
middle ages could not afford TO close its
ears TO the wall of bereaved families; and
theuculprit's first cousin, governor of the
province, entered the castle on Christ
mas eve, 1910, TO enquire into the truth of
these horrible stories, and dis
covered his fair and honorcd re-
latiye, her fair chin propped by
her exquisite hand, calmy watching the
death agonies of three girls, while her at
PENDANTS were filling a bath with the life
blood that was to preserve ,her beauty
The countess herseif.wns too great per
sonage to incur capital punishment, but
for thirty years she was shut up in
solitary confinement lin the castle of
C9oloHei III hungary, Where she hnally
starved herself to death. As for her ac-
completes, they had their hands cut OF
and were subsequently burned at the
stake, as, being common people, there
was no reason for sparing their lives.
1t is said that this fair dame sacrificed
600 girls to her radiance of skin, but the
biographer states soberly that docu-
mentary evidence exists of the murder of
only $50. Whether in after years she
considered thirty years of solitary CON
tinement too high a price to pay for six
years Of unimpaired beauty, it is hard to
say, bat the inference is that she did,
since she killed herself