Saint-Etienne has been the prefecture of the Loire departement since 1855.
Belief in the supernatural.
The Court of Assizes of the Loire has lately acquitted a farmer’s wife and a servant, supposed to be her accomplice, on a charge of incendiarism.
This case grew out of a state of things by no means uncommon in France. The farmer, whose name is Fonteret, is a Voltairian, his wife a devout Catholic. According to the prosecution, Madame Fonteret, despairing, we presume, of impressing her husband by means of argument with a belief in the supernatural, set fire no fewer than fourteen times to his barn and other farm buildings, in order to dispel his scepticism, and bring him back to devotional practices, by inducing a conviction in his mind of the existence, at all events, of malevolent spirits.
The villagers were greatly excited by these events, and were as willing to believe in diabolical agency as Madame Fonteret could possibly wish; one of them, indeed, was so obliging as to call upon her for the purpose, as he said, of giving the devil a good drubbing. The only person unmoved by this series of wonders was M. Fonteret, who afterwards remarked upon the subject, that he had been somewhat surprised at the repeated outbreaks of fire on his premises, but made no efforts to discover their cause, simply because – he was insured.
Edinburgh Evening News, 21st July 1873.
This makes Literally No Sense.