The Sun. — 1859-12-12 (London, England)

BARB.4.RITY IN FRANCE.  -er The great topic of conversation in Paris is a trial which has just taken place at Rheims, which illustrates in the most painful manner the condition •of the French peasantry in the western provinces. The prisoners, a father and mother, named Defert, were indicted on a charge of brutally ill-uging their daughter, a girl of 17 • they were described as "proprietaires," and relatively well off. The acte d'accusation describes their fortune as relatively large, living in a house of their own, and farming their own ground. They have five children, the eldest, Mary Adelina, being about 17. It was a well-known fact that both man and wife treated their children with frightful 'severity ; they had been seen beating them' mercilessly in the fields, and to punish one Of his sons, a lad of 13, the father once threw him into the canal, and pulling him Out after a time, beat him with a stick until animation was restored. In the month of July last, however, the eldest daughter, Adelina, whose appearance of ill-health was ,ascribed to the systematic cruelty practised upon her, suddenly disappeared. A report immediately sprang up in the village that she had been murdered. This report came to the ears of the authorities, an investigation took place, and here is what it led to:—When the authorities penetrated into the house they found the girl Adelina lying on a couch, in a state of such debility and emaciation that a physician was immediately ordered to see what was the matter with her. -What he discovered let the acte d'accusation describe : "The physician had discovered that Adelina was in a state of emaciation which denoted long and cruel sufferings. On the left side of the neck, on the hands, on the right elbow, on the thighs, were the marks of receni wounds, inflicted both by blunt and sharp instruments, by the reiterated contact with the flesh of some' substance in a state of combustion. On' the left cheek a strip of the skin had been torn off, about seven centimetres long by one broad. This, it was, subsequently ascertained, was the result of a cut from a heavy carter's whip, inflicted by her mother. But worse 'than all, the loins, the subvenal portion of the back, the thighs, down to the very knees, were one mass of purulent matter. On other parts of the body, and among others on the subabdominal organ, no less than 18 scars of wounds were counted: The physician was puzzled to account for the peculiar appearance of these wounds and festers, which could only be explained by the constantly repeated combustion of the flesh. He subjected Adelina to a treatment based upon that hypothesis, and found it answer, and, by dint of cross-questioning, she revealed the atrocious treatment she had been subjected to. I may add that her revelations were subsequently confirmed by the admissions of the prisoners. From the statements of Adelina it appeared that she had been brought up in her grandfather's house until she was eight years old, and from that the brutality she underwent commenced. She was employed in driving a plough, and flogged with a cart-horse whip when her strength gave way, There is evidence of this, as also of hr father having beaten her with a pitchfork. At the coin' mencement of the present year, however, the cruelty of her parents assumed• a .regular and systematic character, denoting premeditation. Every day— morning, aoon, and night—her father tied her up in a dark room used for 'breadmaking, and there used to flog her on her thighs and the lower part of her person with a martinet (cat-o'-nine•tails). There is evidence of her father having on one occasion tied her up by the wrists, so that her feet were fairly off the ground, and having previously lifted up her clothes, beat her with the. martinet on all parts of her person. There is evidence, moreover, that in the month of Maroh last, both her father and mother dragged her into a low, vaulted room behind the kitchen ; she was then stripped naked and securer lashed, face doWnWardsi toe carpentering