5 AUGUST 1899, Page 3

An amazing romance of high life has just been terminated

in the Assiie Courts at Venice by the condemnation of a Duchess to twenty-five months' imprisonment for forgery. It appears, from the narrative given in Wednesday's Daily Mail, that a Parisian adventuress, anxious to provide herself with respectable parentage, informed the Ducheese de Beauffre- mont, a lady famed for her piety and philanthropy, that she was prepared to give £2,000 to be adopted by a person of rank. The Duchess accordingly referred her to Prince Giedroye, a ruined nobleman, who, rising to the occasion, declared on seeing the adventuress that she was in very deed his daughter, and that documentary proof could be obtained at Venice. The Duchess accordingly repaired to Venice and procured from a priest named Cogo a forged certificate of birth, on the strength of which the adventuress married one of the Princes Troubetzkoy. Prince Giedroye died before hie guilt came to light, but the Princess Troubetzkoy, arrested on some other charge in Germany, hanged herself in prison, having first denounced the Duchess and the priest as forgers. The story reads like an episode in the age of the Italian despots.