The Sun. — 1862-04-24 (London, England)

BREACH OP CONTRACT.  The Imperial Court of Colmar (Haut Rhin) last week heard an appeal from a judgment of the Strasburg Tribunal of Commerce in an action for breach of contract, brought by M. Gillemot, a singer, ag-atos, ninge, tne .L.Theatre, under the following circumstances :—ln December, 1861, one of the principal performers of the Strasburg theatre fell ill, and the director applied to a theatrical agency in Paris for a peribrmer to replace him. M. Guillemot was recommended, and an agreement was signed that he should receive a salary of 400 fr. a month for playing the first parts in every description of comedy, and certain parts in opera if found competent after the usual three debuts. Guillemot accordingly joined the company in January last, and as the season was then at its height, the director excused him from making the customary debuts, but, according to his own statement, reserved to himself the right of annulling the agreement at the end of the first month. Guillemot was well received by the public as an actor, but failed as a singer. The director then proposed that Guillemot should relinquish the singing parts, and continue to perform as a comedian 250 f. a month. This was refused, and the director declared that the engagement was at an end. Guillemot then brought an action against the director to compel him to fulfil the conditions of .their contract, and also demanded I,ooof. as damages for the injury done to his reputation by the director's conduct. The Tribunal, after hearing counsel for both pnrties, rejected the demand for damages, but decided that the contract was valid, and that the director was bound to assign to Guillemot parts to appear in. Against that decision the director appealed, and his counsel argued that according to the usages of the Strasburg theatre, the director had the right of exercising his own judgment on the merits of a performer, and of applying a suspensive veto, even when the ordeal of the debuts had been satisfactorily passed. Guillemot's counsel, on the other hand, argued that such a theory would leave the performers absolutely at the mercy of the director, and concluded with demanding 2,000 fr. damages, instead of I,ooofr. as before. The Tribunal, in conformity with the opinion expressed by the advocate-general, declared that the judgment must be confirmed, but that there was no ground for awarding damages. The director was condemned to pay all costs.  The Court of Assizes of the Cotes-du-Nord, three days since, tried to o men, named Ribaut and Delavigne, for a criminal assault and violence, resulting in death, committed on the person of a woman named Lorrei fifty years of age, in a publichouse at Dinan, where all three were lodgers for the night. It was proved by the evidence that the men went into the woman's bedroom, that stifled cries were heard, and that in the morning the woman was found dead on the floor with marks of violence on her person. The jury found the prisoners guilty of a criminal assault on the deceased, but with extenuating circumstances in favour of Delavigne ; the Court condemned Ribaut to hard labour for life, and Delavigne to 15 years' imprisonment with hard labour.  A case of suicide by the vapours of charcoal occurred at Neuilly yesterday. The inhabitants of the house, hearing a continued knocking inside an apartment occuped by a young woman and her little girl, about six years old, inquired what was the matter, when the child replied, " Mamma is gone to sleep, and I cannot waken her.' The door was then forced open, and the young woman was found quite dead on the bed near three small stoves containing the remnants of charcoal fires. How it happened that the poor child escaped the effect of the deleterious gas could not be ascertained. It appears that the unhappy woman destroyed herself because she had been deserted by the man who had cohabited with her for six years, after seducing her under promise of marriage.