The Sun. — 1862-11-17 (London, England)

SINGULAR TRIAL.  The Assize Court at Paris, on Thursday, writes our correspondent, was crowded yesterday morning by a well-dressed audience, among whom were several actors and actresses, to hear a singularly dramatic trial for an attempted murder. The prisoner, a young man of 19, but looking younger, was a jeune premier (player of lover's characters) at the little theatre of Mont Parnasse. His name is Dumont. He appears to have been a sort of Cherubim', sighing after every lady within his ken. The actresses to whom he made love laughed at him and treated him as a child, and their husbands or protectors never considered him a rival worth notice. In the course of the summer he became very seriously in love with the wife of a brother actor, named Demongeot, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. He wrote her several amatory epistles, which she never answered ; but she gave him no encouragement, reproved him when they met, and although she did not show the love letters to her husband, only abstained, as it seems, in mercy to her youthful admirer. On July 5, while Demangeot was on the stage in character at the Mont Parnasse Theatre, Dumont went to his dressing room, took the key of his apartments from the pocket of the ordinary clothes which he found there, returned to the body of the theatre, where he vehemently applauded his friend, and then stealthily making use of the key, got into his lodgings, There he partly undressed himself, and, armed with a poignard and a carving knife, took up an expectant position under Madame Demangeot's bed. There he was when the unsuspecting husband came home at midnight. The wife, who had been playing at the Island Theatre, in the Bois de Boulogne, did not get home till half an hour later. The couple took their supper together leisurely, and it was about two in the morning before they retired to rest--in separate beds. Dumont waited quietly till they were well asleep, 'and must have remained in his hiding place for nearly four hours. At three in the morning he got up and made a murderous attack on M. Demangeot in his bed, inflicting no less than 15 wounds, none of which, however, happily, proved fatal or even dangerous. The wife, awakened by her husband's screams, ran down stairs in her nightdress, crying for help. A police-sergeant and a neighbour quickly came to her assistance, and Dumont was secured while struggling with his victim, with whom he was rolling over and over on the floor. Under these circumstances Dumont is indicted on the capital charge of having, with premeditation and guet a pens (lying in .wait), attempted to murder Demangeot. From the depositions and the examination of the prisoner in court, is to be collected that his intention was to murder the husband, and then, if possible, possess the wife; or, in case of her resistance, to murder her and kill himself. As soon as the examinatione theof witnesses was concluded, the Imperial Procureur moved the court that, inasmuch as some ®f prisoner's witnesses spoke of him as reputed insane, the trial should be postponed to another session, in order to afford time for medical examination. This r. motion was energetically opposed by the prisoner's counsel, M. Algernon Jones (a French barrister of English birth), who contended that during the three months which his client had been in prison the public prosecutor had had plenty of time to inquire into the Mate of his mind, and Abundant