A craving for pomp and ostentation was one of the peculiar phases of Madame Restell's character. To gratify this kind of ambition, she purchased, through a real estate agent, ten lots on Fifth avenue, between Fifty-second and Fifty-third streets. They cost at that time $1,000 each--$10,000 for the ten. When it became known that this woman was the purchaser of the ten lots, a movement was at once made by reputable citizens interested in the respectability of New York's leading avenue to repurchase the property. Five thousand dollars were offered for her bargain without avail. When, many years later, the horrified residents of the fashionable thoroughfare beheld ground broken and the abortionist's mansion gradually raising its brazen front, their indignation knew no bounds. Large sums of money were offered the woman to forego her intention, but she haughtily answered that "there was not money enough in New York" to prevent her. No expense was spared, either in the construction or decoration of this palace of infamy. The frescoed ceilings were works of art. Two Italians worked at them for a twelve-month, at an expense of twenty thousand dollars. The carpets and upholstery, ordered through the house of A. T. Stewart & Co., were manufactured specially in Paris. The paintings were selected from the productions of the greatest artists of the period. Her stable was erected at a cost of twenty-eight thousand dollars. The Osborne House, another of her investments, erected on the ground adjoining her own residence, cost about two hundred thousand dollars. In February, 1878, evil days again fell upon Madame Restell. On the eleventh of that month she was arrested by Anthony Comstock, of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and taken to Jefferson Market Police Court, before Justice Kilbretli. She desired her release upon bail, pending examination. The bail was fixed at $10,000, and although she offered to deposit with the court that amount in government bonds, Judge Kilbreth refused. Satisfactory bail not being forthcoming, she was committed to the Tombs, and assigned to a cell on the second tier of the women's prison. By and by, she was released on bail and, pending her trial, some time early on the morning of April 1, 1878, she committed suicide, by cutting her throat from ear to ear, in her bath-tub. The scene was described in that morning's _Herald_, as follows: