A PORTION OF THE JOURNAL KEPT BY THOMAS RAIKES, ESQ. FROM 1831 To 1847. COMPRISING REMINISCENCES OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN LONDON AND PARIS DURING THAT PERIOD. IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. IV. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS. The right of translation is reserved. The PARIS, Friday, January 31st.--Parliament has re- A trial is coming on here of a case which creates much conversation, and shows singular depravity. The story is this: A Mademoiselle Capelle, who is a granddaughter of Ermine, the protégée (and supposed daughter) of Madame de Genlis, was in love with the Comte Charpentier, a young man of fortune and position superior to her own, whom she had known from childhood, and had determined to marry. Under these circumstances, she succeeded in engaging the attentions of Monsieur Charpentier in a manner so marked as impelled her family to request of him an explanation of his motives, and upon his declaring he had none to unfold, to insist upon the discontinuation of his visits. This mortifying conclusion to the young lady's hopes severely affected her health and spirits. She became from that time an altered person; and her relations, anxious to efface the disappointment from her thoughts, looked out for another matrimonial establishment, as their only available resource. The individual presented for Marie Capelle's acceptance was a wealthy iron-manufacturer or maître de forges, in the department of Corrèze, named Lafarge, a young man of twenty-eight years of age, coarse in looks and manners, of provincial accent and habits, and of mean intellect. The inferiority of this match was overlooked by the family of Mademoiselle Capelle, not only from the usual difficulty of disposing of a girl who brought her husband scarcely any fortune, but likewise from the disadvantageous circumstance of her having been subjected to suspicions of theft on more than one occasion. The first charge, on which she now stands before the Tribunal, is that of having appropriated diamonds belonging to one of her friends, to the value of 2007. or 3007. Marie Capelle, it seems, accepted the husband presented to her, and accompanied him to his property in the Limousin, a place called le Glandier, destitute of all the comforts and refinements to which she was used, and whose gloomy and retired situation struck her with sadness and horror. These first desponding impressions, however, being overcome, Madame Lafarge appears to have con |