EVENING SPIDERS
Of a singular judgment

Adam Kruzynski, a hairdresser boss, lived in peace between a war widow, whom he had made his companion, and Mr. Lefèvre, his clerk. One day, Mrs. Lefèvre, the latter's wife, came to warn Kruzynski that a guilty business was clandestinely uniting the widow and the employee. The hairdresser questioned his friend severely; she managed to exonerate herself, but the outraged wife renewed her accusation with such force and precision that Kruzynsky, finally convinced, armed himself with a revolver and killed Lefèvre.

For this crime, the murderer has just been sentenced to eight years of imprisonment, and that is justice; but, let's see what happens next. Didn't the court also award ten thousand francs in damages to Mrs. Lefèvre, the victim's widow, who had filed a civil suit? So this lady, whose intervention was the immediate cause of the tragedy, is going to receive ten thousand francs as the price of a corpse that she so powerfully contributed to making! That is a sentence that Solomon would probably not have approved.

We saw quite recently, at the Assizes, another woman whose stories, moreover false, caused the violent death of an honest man. Could we not prosecute and condemn this kind of brainless woman for manslaughter by imprudence?,

Bernard GERVAISE