The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1842-06-24 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

ANOTHER MADAME LAFFARGE.—At the Assizes of the Rhone, on the sth instant, the wife of a workman named Pre was tried for attempting to murder him by cutting his throat with a razor, The victim of her fury escaped, bleeding profusely, before she could consummate her crime by repeating the attack, and with skilful attention recovered in less than a month. The motive assigned for this offence in the act of accusation was jealousy, bnt the evidence left no doubt that the woman was at the time, and had long been labouririg under monomania. On the day of the attack, after some words with her husband, she had requested him to kiss her. lieflusgliN‘War algtEesiEd a,,razor and drew it under a momentary impulse for which she could InOtTcIeMIEI, and it was proved that she and her four children had been drinking something which would cause death, and that she had attempted to murder her husband in order that the whole family might go out of the world together. She was very indignant, however, on her trial, at the attempt of her counsel and medical witnesses to establish her insanity, and her replies were intended to remove this belief from the minds of the jury, but there were occasional symptoms of incoherence which left no doubt of the fact, and the jury consequently returned a verdict of acquittal, after which the president of the court ordered that she shonld be placed in a lunatic asylum. In the course of the pleading .of her counsel, he cited several instances of monomania to show that the prisoner was really insane, and in illustration of his argument, amongst other cases, related the following extraordinary anecdote :—Madame Adelaide, sister of the King, in 1836 took under her protection a young lady of family, placed her in a boarding school, and received her frequently on holydays at her own apartments in the palace. Suddenly her protegee announced to the schoolmistress and her intimate friends that she was about to be married, under the auspices of her patroness, to a young Lieutenant-Colonel, to whom she had been introduced by her Royal Highness, and in evidence of her assertions produced letters on the subject with the seal of the Princess, and in a handwriting whic,h all acquainted with that of Madame Adelaide believed to be hers. Subsequent letters were also displayed, in which her Royal Highness was made to state, first, that the intended husband was detained away by his regimental duties; then, that he was dangerously ill, and ultimately, that he was dead and buried. The young lady, upon this, gave herself up to such violent grief that fears were entertained for her own life. The only consolation she would listen to was a permission to put herself into the mourning of a widow, and to weep over the tomb of her lost lover. The under governess accompanied her to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, and, at the gate, desired to have pointed out the place of interment of Lieutenant-Colonel Connt M., who had died a week before at the age of 25. The concierge searched the register, and then assured the enquirers that it did not contain the entry of any such burial which consequently must, lie said, have taken place elsewhere. This answer increased the despair of the young lady, who prevailed upon her attendant to go with her to the other cemetaries of Paris, at each of which they met with the like disappointent. It was ni;ht before tey returned home, and the grief stricken pupi retired for est in deeper despair than ever. The governess the nett day, felt it her duty to go to Madame Adelaide, aid relate all these mournful circumstances, taking with her tle letters announcing the events which had so entirely destroyed the peace of her pupil. The astonishment of the Priness on hearing the extraordinary narrative, and at seeing leters apparently in her own handwriting, but which she had lever written, and recognizing impressions from a seal which did really belong to her, could not be described. No such ierson as Lieutenant-Colonel Count M. was known to her Royal Highness, consequently she never could have contmplated any such alliance nor have announcel to her his illness and the young lady hatibeen iuduced by a death. f fur her npfu cp a ti ' morbid imagination to invent the whole ale, to purloin one of her patroness!s seals, imitate her haidwriting, compose the fictitious leitters; and, by bribing anold servant, induce her to put thein in the post. Her mind,aowever, was affected with the same grief from her own ,eliberate invention as if all the circumstances had really exited.