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A CURIOUS STORY.
A very amusing case (says the Paris corre
spondent of the London jDaily Telegraph of
January 25) is now occupying the attention of
;he Civil Court of the Seine. Some years ago
a woman who had led rather a wandering
existence, and who had, moreover, been
divorced from her husband, started in business
as a fashionable dressmaker in Paris. She
went to considerable expense in fitting out her
establishment, took an uppartement for which
she paid ahigh rent, and made frequent journeys
abroad. Through passing herself off asa coulu
rierc to the Empress of Russia—a post which
she said she bad obtained owing to the
influence of a Danish admiral, who intended to
marry her—she induced a relative, a retired
magistrate, to advance the wherewithal, and
succeeded in procuring from him at various
intervals sums amounting to a total of
£t,000. The worthy cousin was so dazzled by
letters which she addressed to him from Copen
hagen and St. Petersburg that he disposed of
one or two small estates for the purpose of
raising the wind, and oddly enough he had in
another magistrate, who also assisted in a less
ambitious manner, a companion in simplicity.
If is true that by way of security an insurance
policy for £8,000 on the life of the dressmaker's
daughter was handed over to the two magis
trates. Their claims, however, have 6ince been
contested, the daughter herself, as well as a host
of creditors, disputing the possession of the
policy. Hence the lawsuit; and it may be
added that the situation is.further complicated
through the faot that the coulurierc, after beat
ing a hasty retreat to St. Petersburg, in conse
quence of the pressing demands of a number of
persons from whom she had obtained money
about two years ago, departed this life in that
city while proceedings were being taken for her
extradition.
It is the correspondence with which shei be
wildered her trustful relative that infused a gay
note into the affair. In one letter she averred
that the admiral—who existed only in her fer
tile imagination—was so jealous that be wanted
to take her to " bhe forests of India" to live
alone with him. In another she compared
herself to Napoleon drawing np s, plan of cam
paign, and added that by that time she would
have received £4,000 if a new Mistress of
the Robes had not been appointed. Writing,
as on bhe former occasion, from Copen
hagen, she asserted that she had just
seen bhe Czarina, who had told her that her
life of toil was nothing in comparison with
that which she had to endure; and after ex
claiming "I had rather sell cloth in a
shop than be where I am," had embraced and
praised her. This absurd story was supple
mented by another, also dated from Copen
hagen, of a drive that she had taken with the
Empress followed by a tete-a-tete dinner
at the palace, apropos of which
she said, - "I shall spare you the
menu, as it is fantastic." The letter wound
upwibhtho assertion that the Czarina-had,
ere she took her departure, promised her
£8,000 due to her in the course of a
few days. By way, too, of stimulating' bhe
zeal of the retired magistrate, he was treated
to a missive purporting to emanate from
bhe fictitious admiral, who naturally spoke
in glowing terms of his love for the
fascinating, dressmaker, said that he would
look after her ohildren, and talked of
his influence at the Russian court; but it was
the postscript in which the admiral again
referred to his projects that fairly carried
the day and led to a further advance of funds.
He would settle at once on the lady of his
affections a villa at Cannes worth £5,000, and
I a net sum of £24,000, and would give, more
over, £100,000 to each of ' the children.'
The open-hearted sailor said, in conclusion,
that be was writing as best he could at a
table in a publiohouse, so he would ask
his correspondent's wife " to excuse bhe'odor
of tobacco that the homage which this,
letters bears her will exhale." Then came a
very sad day. The unlucky magistrate re
ceived a letter from a court official at St.
Petersburg stating that neither the admiral
nor the dressmaker was known to the
EmpresB, and adding that hot a. single
order had ever been given to the estab
lishment in Paris. To orown his troubles he
soon found that he had many other com
panions in misfortune, and the whole party of
viofcims are now engaged in' a desperate effort
to recover some of the money which they had
so oredulonsly lenb to the coulurierc on the
strength of her alleged engagement to a
mythical admiral and of the high favor'whioh
they believed that she.enjoyed at the Russian
Court, > i
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