The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-06-01
MIME. STEINHEIL TELLS OF
 CRIME OF THE CENTURY

Four years ago all Paris was start led by what the morbid and sefsa- st1on-loving newspapers of the City of Light called the crime of the Cen .tury." Mime. Marguerite steinheil
 she who had been the favorite of high officials of the Third Republic, including the late President Felix Faure, has just written a book ex- blaming her part in the many sor- did intrigues and tragedies that have marked her career. The death of her husband, M. Adolf Steinheil, and her rest. the days in the prison of St. Lazare,s the instruction" and the staging of the final act in the drama in the Paris .Assize Court, are retold by Mime. Steinhefl in style most theatrical and sensational. She makes on her during her three hundred and fifty-three days in prison," but her venom is largely directed against the yellow press" of Paris. She draws a pathetic picture of herself as a poor, persecuted, friendless woman, bounded by the reporters, and in the end saved from ignominous death only by the Providence in which she placed her trust. Yet, when all is said, she throws no light on that tragedy of four years, save to intimate that the valuable necklace given her by for mer President Faure was in some mysterious way connected with the murder of her husband and mother.
 Meg Japy, now the ''most take of woman in the world,' was born at Belport. The Japs were wealthy and influential, and her uncles included a general and a senator. At sixteen the beautiful. winsome girl eloped with a young officer of the French army. without the formality of marriage. Two or three mouths they lived to- gether. Then the girl returned to her family. It was necessary that she have a husband, and Adolf Steinheil consented to play the role. He was a painter, but a poor one. stupid, stolid man, yet honest in his way.
 In the house of her husband in the Latin Quarter of Paris Mime. Stein- heil, after the birth of her child, es- tablished the court that was to make her an international character. At .tracted by the beauty and magnetism republic flocked about her, among them President Felix Faure. The ex- pense of entertaining so many, of keeping open house for hundreds and of satisfying their prodigious appetites for wines and food, must have been was a pittance. How Mime. Meg" made up the difference between in- come and outgo she does not ade- ouately explain. Perhaps it is none of our inquisitive. affairs.
 Tn 1899 the wanton beauty first came under suspicion of murder. Pres fdent Felix Faure died, quite sudden ly. Mme Steinheil was with him. She gave him a drink of a 'tonic" he had been taking. A moment later the President shrieked. Convulsions shook his ox-like body. His big hands gripped the long, flowing blonde hair of Mime. Steinheil. So he died. So they were found-the hysterical wom- an held fast, unable to escape from the grasp of the ghastly, black-visag- ed corpse He must have loved her, that Faure, to cling so fast, in death, to the "crowning beauty of that scantily-clad wanton whose lips he had just kissed. But perhaps it was hate. or suspicion, that had caused the hands to clench so firmly. At any rate. the surgeon worked for an hour to release the hold of the cold fling CTS. There is a scene for the painter of the horrible-the calm, cold-blood-. ed man of science, the dead man with the staring, unseeing eyes, the half nude, woman, shrieking in agony and fear.
 Mrne. Steinheil says little of this in her book. Who shall blame her?