The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-02
FRANCIS FELIX FAURE

From the New York Evening World.
 Francois Felix Faure President of France, died at the Eysee Palace tonight at 1o15 from an apoplectic stroke"
 So ran a dispatch, dated Paris, Febru- ary IS, 1899," and published next morning throughout the civilized world. On the face of it there seemed scant mystery in the announcement. Faure was over 90. For some time he had not been in perfect health The tumult about the Dreyfus trial that had shaken France had rIn- doubtedly told on the Presidents nerve. So the world at large accepted the 'state-' ment. If many Parisians, journalists and government officials thought they knew Letter their voices were deafened for a time by d threat of revolution that swept their country. Faure's death seemed to some malcontents an ideal chance for an overthrow of the republic and a re- storation of the old monarchy or empire. The expected revolution proved a mere fizzle But by the time France settled down once more to It's daily routine other happenings had dimmed the earlier excite ment over the Presidents death.'
 Then-at first in yelled hint and later in more bold, circumstantial fashlon-arose rumors that Faure had not died natural death. Some reports strove to weave a scandal about his fate; others talked openly of assassination. In 1908 the ru- mors blazed forth into new and greater publicity on account of the Steinheil case.
 In May of last year the beautiful wife of Arthur Steinheil, an artist, was found gagged and strapped to a bedpost in her room. In the same house the murdered and bound bodies of her husband and step-mother were discovered. Mme Stein hell told the police, a dramatic tale of several masked and gpwned figures that had entered the house by night, killed the two other members of the family, tied and gagged her and stolen everything they could find. There were odd features about the case; yet for six months Mime. Stein l1eii remained an object of public pity. Meantime she seemed bent on hunting down the murderers Then she was ar rested, charged with the double crime
 At once there sprang into print in more than one French newspaper, insinuations that she was a sort of a government spy that the police had refrained for half a year from arresting her on account of of- fcial influences that her wiles upon the visiting King of Cambodia had caused that copper-coored potentate to sign a treaty highly advantageous to France
 But the most remarkable press accusa- ton was that President Faure had been stricken, not at Elysee, but at Mime. Steinheils house; and-it was more than strongly hinted-that he met death through poison administered through her agency Stories were printed here and there that the dying President had been carried se- cretly by the police from the Steinheil home to the Elysee, a dubious coroner satisfied, and nasty preparations made for burial, in order to conceal traces of poison Nor was an alleged motive lack ing, This supposed motive had even earli- CT been voiced by the famous Henri Roch- efort when he angrily called to notice in La Patrie that Faure had died mysterious lv lon the day on which the decree for the revision of the Dreyfus affair was to