Apropos of Pere Lachaise, a story which illustrates the gullibility of some newspaper readers has recently come to light. A Paris paper published 'a circumstantial paragraph to the effect that a Russian countess of great wealth, interred in the famous necropolis, had left directions in her will that a handsome annual income should be paid to any person who would undertake to live in the chapel built over the vault and keep the tomb in order. This story was duly republished in the English halfpenny papers, with the result that not only the French journal whicn originated the tale, but ther English contemporaries were inundated with letters from readers asking for details of the supposed bequest and offering their services. One of my English confreres here endeavoured to get at the truth of "the matter. He interviewed the editor of the French paper and was diplomatically informed that their contributor, an occasional one, had been asked to supply further particu lars, but that in the meantime there was nothing to add to what had been published. Ho then tried the police and at hit upon an oficial who vaguely remembered having heard shout some such eccentric bequest but thought it must have been three or four years og Determined to solve the mystery, the indefatigable investigator went to the cemetery superintendent and found that the whole story was a pure invention.
Tt cropped up from time to time, he said, and he had received many applications from would-be guardians of the mythical countess' tomb; but as it did not exist and had never existed he could not give them any satisfaction. Ho added that the cemetery regulations would not permit anyone to live in a tomb: an evident circumstance which seems to have escaped the notice of the eager applicants. Tt is to be feared that many of these intelligent persons' faith in the reliability of newspapers will have been rudely disturbed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.