TRUNK MYSTERY TRIAL.

DRAMATIC SCENES.

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. PARIS, Sunday.

Interest had been quickened by the dramatic scenes which marked Friday’s sitting of the trial of Madame Bessarabo and her daughter for the murder of the woman’s second husband, and when the Court met yesterday there was keen curiosity as to whether President Gilbert would succeed in worming out of the girl the secret she had hinted at. If the auditors in Court expected a sensational climax, a confession from the dock, they were doomed to disappointment. .

Looking at the mother and daughter when they took their places in the dock, it was difficult to realise by their demeanour that they had passed through a terrible ordeal on the previous day. Both were smiling and chatting quite pleasantly to their counsel. But these smiles and pleasant talk were but the prelude to tragic moments when President Gilbert got to work.

During the magisterial inquiry both mother and daughter had made confessions which it is now pretended were inventions. The president now sought confirmation of these confessions. He found himself up against a brick wall. Both women had declared that they had thrown the revolver with which the crime was committed and the dead man’s jewels into the lake at Enghien; they now admitted having sailed in a boat on the lake, but denied having thrown anything into the water.

The dead man’s brother, M. Gustave Weissmann, protested against the allegations that M. Bessarabo was a spy and a swindler. “When I saw the dead body of my brother,” added the witness, I cried, ‘The assassin is not far.’”

The accused wife had evidently prepared for this witness. What a tragic speech she made! Now tender, now sobbing tragically and then furious as she rebutted the charge of murder against her. During this harangue, her daughter’s shrieks were heard. It was a moving spectacle this the mother declaiming and the daughter weeping at the same time; but it left many auditors in the court cold. Madame Bessarabo was believed to be acting a part and acting it well. If so it was the greatest of the many rôles she has played in her career of stress and storm.