The Humbert Trial.
THE HUMBERT TRIAL.
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A GLIMPSE OF A FRENCH
CAUSE CELEBRE. BY A. E. PILLSBURY. France sitting at her table, frequenting her IN the vacation rambles of an American box at the Opera, shooting over her pre lawyer, surveying the realms and noting serves, and borrowing her money, and for the customs of European nations, few things about twenty years maintained a consider are more interesting than personal observa able influence in political and financial cir tion of their judicial proceedings. A visit to cles, and a foremost place among the brilliant the Court of Assises of Paris during the leaders of smart Parisian society. All this Humbert-Daurignac trial has left some im she did upon no other capital than her own pressions which, if they can be reflected in assurance, without a franc in the world that print, may not be unwelcome to members of she could honestly call her own. the profession who look in vain for a mental The tale by which this Circe lured the picture of a foreign court of justice in the money-lenders to their destruction was, in colorless formality of the Law Reports. substance, this: As she was about to enter The central figure in this extraordinary upon her inherited wealth, two nephews of case, which marked an epoch in the history the deceased Crawford turned up, with an of fraud, scandalized the French judiciary, other will of the same date as that under threatened the government, and finally cul which she claimed, dividing the hundred mil minated in one of the most sensational trials lions between her and themselves. This led of our time, was originally a peasant girl of Toulouse, by name Therese Daurignac, by to controversy, but the Cravfords, represent ing that they cared nothing for the money vocation successively a laundress, sales and only desired to carry out their uncle's woman and milliner's apprentice. In or al>out wish to unite the families of Crawford and 1877 she caused it to be given out that she Daurignac, proposed that one of them had inherited from an American named should marry Mine. Humbert's younger sis Robert Henry Crawford a fortune of one ter; and it was finally agreed that the whole hundred million francs. She came to Paris, fortune should be deposited with Mme. married Frederic Humbert, an advocate with Humbert, to be invested in French rentes, a taste for poetry and the arts, son of an from which she should take to her own use ex-Minister of Justice, who was one of the an income of one thousand francs per day, most eminent lawyers in France, and em barked upon a meteoric career of luxury and holding the capital and its further accumuladisplay with money borrowed upon the faith 'tions as the dowry of her sister upon the of her alleged inheritance. She acquired an marriage. Accordingly, the safe, now cele imposing mansion in the most fashionable brated, was installed in her house and filled quarter of Paris, furnished and adorned with with the securities in which the fortune was the rarest works of art, a country-seat on the invested. When Mile. Daurignac, the pro Seine, with such appurtenances as a steam spective fiancee, reached her majority, she yacht and a fleet of gondolas, various cha declined the alternative of marrying either teaux and estates in other rural parts, estab of the Crawfords. This led to further con lished in Paris a life insurance and annuity troversy, and finally to an agreement of company, the Rentes Viageres, entertained compromise by which the bulk of the fortune lavishly, some of the most eminent men in became the property of Mme. Humbert.
