The great Humbert trial ended last Saturday in a verdict
of " Guilty " against all the defendants, though with the rider of "extenuating circumstances," which means in France that the crimes alleged do not call for a crushing sentence. The sentence, however, on Madame Humbert and her husband is a, severe one, five years of solitary confinement being to a woman of her luxurious habits almost worse than death. The other defendants have only three and two years, the Judge -apparently considering them mere accomplices. The verdict
was always certain after the narrative speech of the Procureur- Gineral, but it was made more secure by Madame Humberea final defence. She had promised to produce the millions, and crush her opponents by revealing a "secret," which, it seemed from Maitre Labori's speech, would be a disgraceful one, and especially painful to all " patriotic Frenohmen." When she ended, however, the audience only laughed;for they perceived that her "secret" was a mere rigmarole of* assertions. The " Craw- ford " who bequeathed the hundred millions of francs was, Madame Humbert declared, one Regnier, whom France had forgotten, but who was the go-between of Bismarck and Bazaine during the siege of Metz. As Reg,nier died after the alleged inheritance had devolved, and was always a poor man, the story as an explanation was discreditable to Madame • Humbert's powers of romancing. They had, perhaps, died away ; but one cannot but suspect that the appreciation of them has been absurdly exaggerated, and that she was an ordinary adventuress, greatly helped by sheer luck, by the fears of the usurers who lent her money, and by the hypnotic influence which talk of millions exercises on the French imagination.
