19 MAY 1900, Page 1

The municipal elections in Paris have been marked by a

bizarre incident. The Comtesse de Martel, a lady of fifty who for the last thirty years ha e been a popular novelist under the name of "Gyp," declares that on the night of Friday week she was leaving a political meeting when she was invited to call on a Nationalist friend. She obeyed, was placed in a cab and driven into a remote suburb, where she was locked up in an isolated house and told to wait. She got out of the window, climbed a palisade seven feet high, and after long wanderings, during which she pulled and ate three carrots, she met a douanier who conducted her into Paris. The police cannot find the house, carrots are not grown near Paris at this time, and the lady is so fanatic a Nationalist that the whole story is discredited. Her own theory is that she was carried off, presumably in Jew interest, to prevent her interference in the elections, but two other theories also find favour. One is that she invented the whole story in order to create a sensation, and the other is that she is v,riting a novelette with an abduction in it, that she arranged the little drama to increase the actuality of her description, and that while " escaping " it occurred to her that she might use her carefully arranged adventure for a political end. The third theory may be true or false, but it fits the facts best.