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The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations: Real Life

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Title: The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations: Real Life

Editor: Julian Hawthorne

Contributor: David P. Abbott
        Hereward Carrington
        Andrew Lang
        Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin
        Arthur Cheney Train
        P. H. Woodward


        
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2031]
                Most recently updated: April 3, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2031


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOCK AND KEY LIBRARY: THE MOST INTERESTING STORIES OF ALL NATIONS: REAL LIFE ***
Ver.04.29.93*END*


THE LOCK AND KEY LIBRARY

THE MOST INTERESTING STORIES OF ALL NATIONS

Edited by Julian Hawthorne


REAL LIFE


Table of contents

PART I--DETECTIVE STORIES FROM REAL LIFE


ARTHUR TRAIN

A Flight into Texas


P. H. WOODWARD

Adventures in the Secret Service of the Post-Office Department

An Erring Shepherd

An Aspirant for Congress

The Fortune of Seth Savage

A Wish Unexpectedly Gratified

An Old Game Revived

A Formidable Weapon



ANDREW LANG

Saint-Germain the Deathless

The Man in the Iron Mask

    The Legend

    The Valet's History

    The Valet's Master

    Original Papers in the Case of Roux De Marsilly



PART II--TRUE STORIES OF MODERN MAGIC


M. ROBERT-HOUDIN

A Conjurer's Confessions

Self-Training

"Second Sight"

The Magician Who Became an Ambassador

Facing the Arab's Pistol


DAVID P. ABBOTT

Fraudulent Spiritualism Unveiled

A Doctor of the Occult

How the Tricks Succeeded

The Name of the Dead

Mind Reading in Public

Some Famous Exposures


HEREWARD CARRINGTON

More Tricks of "Spiritualism"


"Matter through Matter"

Deception Explained by the Science of Psychology


ANONYMOUS

How Spirits Materialize



PART I--DETECTIVE STORIES FROM REAL LIFE



Arthur Train

A Flight into Texas


The flight and extradition of Charles F. Dodge unquestionably
involved one of the most extraordinary battles with justice in the
history of the criminal law.  The funds at the disposal of those
who were interested in procuring the prisoner's escape were
unlimited in extent, and the arch conspirator for whose safety
Dodge was spirited away was so influential in political and
criminal circles that he was all but successful in defying the
prosecutor of New York County, even supported as the latter was by
the military and judicial arm of the United States Government.
For, at the time that Dodge made his escape, a whisper from Hummel
was enough to make the dry bones of many a powerful and ostensibly
respectable official rattle and the tongue cleave to the roof of
his mouth in terror.


(The District Attorney's office in New York City is undoubtedly one
of the best watch-towers known from which to observe "Real Life
Detective Stories."

Arthur Train, sometime member of this prosecuting staff, has
opportunity to record several of these curious and exciting "True
Stories of Crime" (copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribners Sons).
None yields less to fiction save in the fact that it is true, and
not at all in quality of dramatic interest, than "A Flight into
Texas," here given.

Readers of the newspapers a few years ago will remember the names
of Abraham Hummel and Charles F. Dodge.  The latter, a railroad
conductor, was alleged to have committed perjury at the dictate of
the former, known as one of the brightest, least scrupulous lawyers
in this city.  It was one of District Attorney Jerome's great
ambitions to bring Hummel to justice.  Here was an opportunity.  If
Dodge could only be forced to testify to this perjury before a
court, Hummel could undoubtedly be convicted of a crime that would
not only disbar him from the legal profession, but would put him in
jail.

Dodge had run away and disappeared as the storm seemed about to
burst.  Where was he?  Who could find and bring him back--against
Abe Hummel's wish?--EDITOR.)


Who could accomplish that in which the law was powerless?--Hummel.
Who could drive to the uttermost ends of the earth persons against
whom not a shadow of suspicion had previously rested?--Hummel.  Who
dictated to the chiefs of police of foreign cities what they should
or should not do in certain cases; and who could, at the beckoning
of his little finger, summon to his dungeon-like offices in the New
York Life Building, whither his firm had removed from Centre
Street, the most prominent of lawyers, the most eminent of
citizens?--Surely none but Hummel.  And now Hummel was fighting for
his own life.  The only man that stood between him and the iron
bars of Blackwell's Island was Charles F. Dodge--the man whom he
had patted on the knee in his office and called a "Mascot," when
quite in the nature of business he needed a little perjury to
assist a wealthy client.

Hummel in terror called into play every resource upon which, during
forty years of practice, his tiny tentacles had fastened.  Who
shall say that while he made a show of enjoying himself nightly
with his accustomed lightheartedness in the Tenderloin, he did not
feel confident that in the end this peril would disappear like the
others which had from time to time threatened him during his
criminal career?  But Hummel was fully aware of the tenacity of the
man who had resolved to rid New York of his malign influence.  His
Nemesis was following him.  In his dreams, if he ever dreamed, it
probably took the shape of the square-shouldered District Attorney
in the shadow of whose office building the little shyster practiced
his profession.  Had he been told that this Nemesis was in reality
a jovial little man with a round, ruddy face and twinkling blue
eyes he would have laughed as heartily as it was in his power to
laugh.  Yet such was the fact.  A little man who looked less like a
detective than a commercial traveler selling St. Peter's Oil or
some other cheerful concoction, with manners as gentle and a voice
as soft as a spring zephyr, who always took off his hat when he
came into a business office, seemingly bashful to the point of
self-effacement, was the one who snatched Charles F. Dodge from the
borders of Mexico and held him in an iron grip when every influence
upon which Hummel could call for aid, from crooked police
officials, corrupt judges, and a gang of cutthroats under the guise
of a sheriff's posse, were fighting for his release.

Jesse Blocher is not employed in New York County, and for business
reasons he does not wish his present address known.  When he comes
to New York he occasionally drops into the writer's office for a
cigar and a friendly chat about old times.  And as he sits there
and talks so modestly and with such quiet humor about his
adventures with the Texas Rangers among the cactus-studded plains
of the Lone Star State, it is hard, even for one who knows the
truth, to realize that this man is one of the greatest of
detectives, or rather one of the most capable, resourceful, adroit,
and quick-witted knights of adventure who ever set forth upon a
seemingly impossible errand.

It is unnecessary to state just how the District Attorney
discovered the existence of "Jesse," as we knew him.  It is enough
to say that on Saturday morning, July 23, 1904, he was furnished
with the proper credentials and given instructions to proceed at
once to New Orleans, Louisiana, and "locate," if it were humanly
possible to do so, Charles F. Dodge, under indictment for perjury,
and potentially the chief witness against Abraham H. Hummel, on a
charge of conspiracy.  He was told briefly and to the point that,
in spite of the official reports from the police headquarters of
both New York City and New Orleans to the contrary, there was
reason to believe that Dodge was living, although not registered,
as a guest at the St. Charles Hotel in the latter city.  A partial
and inaccurate description of Dodge was given him and he was warned
to use extreme caution to prevent any knowledge of his mission from
being made known.  Once Dodge had been discovered, he was to keep
him under surveillance and wire New York immediately.

Accordingly, Jesse left the city upon the same day at 4.45 P. M.
and arrived two days later, at 9.15 on Monday morning, at New
Orleans, where he went directly to the St. Charles Hotel,
registered, and was assigned to room Number 547 on the fifth floor.
Somewhere in the hotel Dodge was secreted.  The question was how to
find him.  For an hour Jesse sat in the hotel foyer and
meditatively watched the visitors come and go, but saw no sign of
his quarry.  Then he arose, put on his hat, and hunted out a
stationery store where for two cents he bought a bright-red
envelope.  He then visited a ticket-scalper's office, secured the
owner's business card, and wrote a note on its back to Dodge,
offering him cheap transportation to any point that he might
desire.  Armed with this he returned to the hotel, walked to the
desk, glanced casually over a number of telegrams exposed in a rack
and, when the clerk turned his back, placed the note, addressed to
Charles F. Dodge, unobserved, upon the counter.  The office was a
busy one, guests were constantly depositing their keys and
receiving their mail, and, even as Jesse stood there watching
developments, the clerk turned round, found the note, and promptly
placed it in box Number 420.  The very simple scheme had worked,
and quite unconsciously the clerk had indicated the number of the
room occupied by Dodge.

Jesse lost no time in ascending to the fourth floor, viewed room
Number 420, returned to the desk, told the clerk that he was
dissatisfied with the room assigned him, and requested that he be
given either room Number 421, 423, or 425, one of which he stated
that he had occupied on a previous visit.  After some discussion
the clerk allotted him room Number 423, which was almost directly
opposite that occupied by Dodge, and the detective at once took up
his task of watching for the fugitive to appear.

Within the hour the door opened and Dodge and a companion, who
subsequently proved to be E. M. Bracken, alias "Bradley," an agent
employed by Howe and Hummel, left the room, went to the elevator,
and descended to the dining-room upon the second floor.  Jesse
watched until they were safely ensconced at breakfast and then
returned to the fourth floor where he tipped the chambermaid, told
her that he had left his key at the office, and induced her to
unlock the door of room Number 420, which she did under the
supposition that Jesse was the person who had left the chamber in
Dodge's company.  The contents of the room convinced Jesse that he
had found Dodge, for he discovered there two grips bearing Dodge's
name as well as several letters on the table addressed to him.  The
detective returned to the hall and had a little talk with the maid.

"The old gentleman with you has been quite sick," she said.  "How
is he to-day?"

"He is some better," answered Jesse.

"Yes, he does look better to-day," she added, "but he sho'ly was
powerful sick yesterday.  Why, he hasn't been out of his room befo'
fo' five or six days."

This statement was corroborated by Dodge's physical appearance, for
he looked haggard and worn.

Jesse was now confident that he had found Dodge, in spite of the
reports of the New Orleans police to the contrary, and he was also
reasonably sure that the fugitive was too sick to leave the hotel
immediately.  He therefore telegraphed his superiors that he had
discovered Dodge and that the latter was ill at the St. Charles
Hotel.

At three o'clock in the afternoon Jesse received a wire from New
York as follows:


"New Orleans police department claims party not there.  Left for
Mexico three weeks ago.  Ascertain correct destination and wire at
once."


Jesse at once replied:


"No question as to identity and presence here at this time."


He now took up the task of keeping his quarry under absolute
surveillance day and night, which duty from that moment he
continued for a period of nearly ten months.

During the remainder of the afternoon and throughout the night
Dodge and Bracken remained in room Number 420, and during the
evening were visited by several strangers, including a plain-
clothes officer from the New Orleans Police Headquarters.  Little
Hummel, dining in Long Acre Square in the glare of Broadway, was
pressing some invisible button that transmitted the power of his
influence even to the police government of a city two thousand
miles away.

The following day, January 26th, at about 8.40 in the morning,
Dodge and Bracken descended to the lobby.  Bracken departed from
the hotel, leaving Dodge to pay the bill at the cashier's window
and Jesse heard him order a cab for the 11.30 A. M. Sunset Limited
on the Southern Pacific Railroad and direct that his baggage be
removed from his room.  Jesse did the same.

In the meantime Bracken returned and promptly at 11 A. M. left for
the railroad station in a cab with Dodge.  Jesse followed in
another.  As the two passed through the gates the detective caught
a glimpse of Dodge's ticket and saw that it had been issued by the
Mexican National Railway.  Retiring to the telegraph office in the
station he wired New York as follows:


"Bird flying.--Sunset Limited.  Destination not known.  I am with
him."


He then hastily purchased a ticket to Houston, Texas, and boarded
the train.  Dodge's companion had bidden him good-by as the engine
started, and Jesse's task now became that of ferreting out Dodge's
destination.  After some difficulty he managed to get a glimpse of
the whole of the fugitive's ticket and thus discovered that he was
on his way to the City of Mexico, via Eagle Pass, Texas, while from
the Pullman conductor he learned that Dodge had secured sleeping-
car accommodation as far as San Antonio, Texas, only.

So far all was well.  He knew Dodge but Dodge did not know him, and
later on in the afternoon he had the satisfaction of a long talk
with his quarry in the observation car where they amiably discussed
together current events and argued politics with the same vehemence
as if they had been commercial travellers thrown fortuitously into
each other's company.  Dodge, however, cleverly evaded any
reference to his destination.


When the train reached Morgan City, Louisiana, at 3 P. M., which
was the first stop, Jesse wired New York as follows:


"On Sunset Limited with friend.  He has transportation to the City
of Mexico, via Eagle Pass, where I am now journeying with him.
Answer to Beaumont, Texas."


Later in the afternoon he sent an additional message from
Lafayette, Louisiana:


"Have seen transportation of friend and am positive of
destination."


Dodge was occupying Section 3 of the sleeping car "Capitola," and,
as became an invalid, retired early.

At Beaumont Jesse failed to receive any reply to his various
messages, and when the train arrived at Houston no word came from
New York until it was almost the time of departure.  Waiting until
practically the last moment Jesse hurried through the gates of the
Union Station at Houston and bought a ticket to San Antonio.  As he
was leaving the ticket window Night Chief of Police John Howard and
two officers came hurrying up inquiring anxiously for "Mr. Jesse."
The reenforcements had arrived.

Outside on the track "The Sunset Limited" was just getting under
way.  The first frantic puffs were being vomited from the funnel.
Inside Dodge was sleeping peacefully in his berth.  Jesse,
accompanied by Chief Howard, hurried up to the conductor who was
about to swing on to the steps of the sleeper, and ordered him to
hold the train till the fugitive could be removed.  After some
argument the conductor grumblingly complied and Dodge was aroused
from pleasant dreams of the "Creole Quarter" to the cold reality of
being dragged out of bed by a policeman.  He was unceremoniously
hustled out of the sleeping car into a carriage and taken to
Headquarters where he admitted his identity and remarked:

"I know what I am wanted for, but I will never return to New York."

In his grip was found the sum of $1,563.15, as well as numerous
letters from the law firm of Howe and Hummel, and a quantity of
newspaper clippings relative to his case.

Dodge pleaded with Chief Howard not to lock him up, urging that he
was a sick man and offering a goodly sum if he might be taken to a
hotel and guarded for the remainder of the night.  But what "went"
in New Orleans did not "go" in Houston, and the best that Dodge
could get for himself was a cot in the "Ladies' Detention Room" on
the second floor of the jail.

Early the following morning Jesse visited Police Headquarters and
for the first time met George Ellis, Chief of Police of Houston,
for whom he will always have a feeling of deep gratitude for his
enthusiastic cooperation and loyalty in the many stirring events
that followed.  Dodge now received a telegram from New York, which
was submitted to Jesse before reaching the prisoner, to the effect
that Howe and Hummel were sending on an attorney to aid the
fugitive in resisting extradition, and informing him that they had
employed Messrs. Hunt and Meyers as attorneys to look out for his
welfare.  These last immediately jumped in medias res and on the
afternoon of the same day secured a writ of habeas corpus from
Norman J. Kitrell, District Judge of Harris County, Texas,
returnable the following morning.

The next day, January 28th, Kitrell released Dodge from custody.

Jesse had anticipated this and immediately swore out another
warrant with the result that the prisoner was rearrested before he
left the courtroom.

Meantime the Dodge interests retained another firm of lawyers,
Messrs. Andrews and Ball, who, on the following day, secured a
second writ of habeas corpus from Judge Ashe.

The result of the first engagement thus being a draw, counsel on
both sides agreed that this writ should not be returnable for six
days.  During this period District Attorney Jerome employed Messrs.
Baker, Botts, Parker and Garwood to represent him and secured from
Governor Odell at Albany a requisition on Governor Lanham of Texas
for the extradition of the prisoner, which he entrusted to
Detective Sergeant Herlihy of the New York Police.  Herlihy reached
Houston with the papers on the evening of January 30th, and on the
same train with him came Abraham Kaffenburgh, a member of the law
firm of Howe and Hummel and a nephew of the latter.  Likewise also
came Bracken, still styling himself "E. M. Bradley," and from now
on Bracken was the inseparable companion, guide, philosopher, and
friend (?) of the unfortunate Dodge, whose continued existence upon
this earth had become such a menace to the little lawyer in New
York.

Herlihy, accompanied by Judge Garwood, proceeded direct to Austin
where they found Dodge already represented by Messrs. Andrews and
Ball who, at the hearing before Governor Lanham, made a strong
effort to induce that executive to refuse to honor the requisition
of the Governor of New York.  This effort failed and Governor
Lanham issued his warrant, but Herlihy had no sooner returned to
Houston for the purpose of taking possession of the prisoner than
he was served with an injunction enjoining him, together with Chief
of Police Ellis, from taking Dodge into custody, pending a hearing
upon a new habeas corpus which had been issued by Judge Waller T.
Burns of the United States District Court for the Southern District
of Texas.  This new writ was returnable February 9th.

After exhaustive but futile argument by the counsel for Dodge,
Judge Burns remanded the prisoner to Herlihy's custody to be
returned to the State of New York, but this decision had no sooner
been rendered than an appeal was taken therefrom by Dodge's
lawyers, and the prisoner released upon bail fixed at twenty
thousand dollars.

During this period Dodge was quartered under guard at the Rice
Hotel in Houston, and the day following the argument the twenty-
thousand-dollars bail was put up in cash and Dodge released from
custody.

In the meantime, however, Jesse, knowing that no sum, however
large, would deter Hummel from spiriting Dodge out of the country,
had made his arrangements to secure a new extradition warrant from
the Governor of Texas, so that if the prisoner did succeed in
getting beyond the Southern District of the Federal Court of Texas,
he could be seized and conveyed to New York.

Of course someone had to keep watch over Dodge while Jesse hurried
to Austin to see the Governor, and it was decided to leave Sergeant
Herlihy, re-enforced by a number of local detectives for that
purpose.  But while the watchful Jesse was away, Bracken proceeded
to get busy in the good old Howe and Hummel fashion.  Lots of
people that Herlihy had never seen before turned up and protested
that he was the finest fellow they had ever met.  And as Herlihy
was, in fact, a good fellow, he made them welcome and dined and
wined at their expense until he woke up in the Menger Hotel in San
Antonio and inquired where he was.

Jesse meantime had returned from Austin to discover that Dodge with
his companions, Kaffenburgh and Bracken, had slipped out of Houston
early in the morning of February 11th, after disposing of Herlihy
and eluding the watchfulness of Herlihy's assistants.  Hummel was
leading and by ten o'clock the next morning Dodge and his comrades
were on board an English merchantman lying in the harbor of
Galveston.  Later in the same day the Hummel interests chartered
from the Southern Pacific Railroad for the sum of three thousand
dollars the sea-going tug Hughes, to which Dodge was now
transferred for the purpose of being conveyed to the port of
Tampico in the Republic of Mexico.

But here Hummel's wires became crossed with Jerome's, and
unfortunately for the little lawyer, the persons from whom the tug
had been leased turned out to be closely allied with the
prosecution's interests, with the result that the captain of the
tug was instructed by his superiors under no consideration to put
into any Mexican port, but on the contrary, to delay his departure
from the harbor of Galveston for a period of two days and then to
proceed only as far as Brownsville, Texas, where he should compel
the debarkation of the fugitive.  The captain, who was a good sport
as well as a good officer, promptly threw himself into the part and
told Bracken and Kaffenburgh that it was evident from the barometer
that a severe storm was approaching (which must have had a sinister
implication to these two unfortunate gentlemen), and that he could
not think of putting to sea.  Once the "storm" had blown over, the
tug started out across the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  But
now Bracken and Kaffenburgh were informed for the first time it was
impossible to consider putting into any port of the Republic of
Mexico, since to do so would cause international complications and
compel the revocation of the captain's license.  In desperation the
Hummel interests offered the captain five thousand dollars in cash
to disregard his instructions and put into Tampico, but the worthy
sea-dog was adamant.  It was probably worth five thousand dollars
to him to see three gentry of this pattern so much put about.

While Dodge and his accomplices were dallying in the harbor of
Galveston, Jesse was taking advantage of his opportunity to proceed
at once by railroad to Alice, Texas, which at that time was the
furthermost southern point reached by any railway in the direction
of Brownsville.  On his arrival, he at once applied to Captain John
R. Hughes, commanding Company D of the Texas Rangers, who received
him with great joy and ordered a detachment of the Rangers to meet
the tug at Point Isabelle at the mouth of the Rio Grande River on
the border of Mexico.  In the meantime, Jesse started on a toilsome
stage journey to Brownsville, across one hundred and seventy miles
of desert, which occupied two days and nights, and necessitated his
going without sleep for that period.  During the trip Jesse heard
no word of English and had as his associates only Mexican
cattlemen.  Every fifteen miles a fresh relay of broncos was
hitched to the stage and after a few moments' rest the misery began
again.

Jesse had been hurrying toward Brownsville by stage while Dodge,
Kaffenburgh, and Bracken were landing at Point Isabelle, where they
were kept under close surveillance by Sergeant Tom Ross of the
Rangers.  Thence they took the train to Brownsville, registering at
the Miller House under the assumed names of C. F. Dougherty, A.
Koontzman, and E. M. Barker, all of Oklahoma.  But, although they
knew it not, Sergeant Tom was at their elbow, and had Dodge
attempted to cross the border into Mexico he would instantly have
been placed under arrest.

As Brownsville was within the Southern District of the Federal
Court of Texas, Jesse decided not to arrest Dodge until he should
actually attempt flight, and when Dodge and his companions, on the
following morning, February 15th, entered the stage (the same upon
which Jesse had arrived) and started for Alice, Jesse and Tom Ross
procured the best horses they could find and started after them,
keeping just in sight of the stage.  Dodge's intention in making
this move was to take the Mexican International Railway at Alice
and cross over to Mexico via Laredo.

Jesse and Ross covered the seventy-four miles from Brownsville to
Santa La Cruz Ranch by four in the afternoon, which was fairly
strenuous work for a New York detective, and here found themselves
so sore and exhausted from their ride that they were glad to hire a
pair of horses and buggy with which to complete the journey to
Alice.  Luckily they were able to get into telephonic communication
with various ranch owners along the road and arrange to have fresh
relays of horses supplied to them every twenty miles, and here also
Jesse called up Captain Hughes at Alice, and suggested that he
substitute for the regular night clerk at the City Hotel one of the
privates of the Rangers by the name of Harrod.

Dodge and his companions arrived in Alice on February 17th, and, as
Jesse had anticipated, repaired at once to the City Hotel, where,
inasmuch as they were dry from the dust of their trip and depressed
by lack of society, they entered at once into an enthusiastic and
confidential friendship with the man behind the counter in the
hotel office, sublimely ignorant that they were unfolding to a
member of the Texas Rangers all their most secret intentions.
Harrod was just as glad to see Dodge as Dodge apparently was to see
Harrod, and kindly offered to assist the fugitive to get into
Mexico in any way that the latter desired.  Dodge, for his part,
took advantage of his usefulness to the extent of requesting him to
purchase them railroad tickets, the plan being to leave Alice the
following morning for Monterey, Mexico.  Three hours after the
stage bearing Dodge and his party pulled up at the City Hotel, Tom
Ross and Jesse drove in behind a pair of fagged-out broncos at two
in the morning.  Jesse had had no sleep of any sort and no proper
nourishment for five days, and had just strength enough left to
drag himself up one flight of stairs and tumble into bed, from
which he did not emerge for many hours.

In the meantime day broke and Dodge, Kaffenburgh, and Bracken,
having breakfasted, drove comfortably down to the International
Railway Station and settled themselves in the smoker, but they had
no sooner given this direct evidence of their intention before
Captain Hughes entered and placed Dodge under arrest.  The latter's
surprise may be appreciated when it is stated that from the time
the three had left Houston, they had no idea that they were being
followed and believed that they had completely foiled Jesse and his
assistants.

While Jesse had been chasing Dodge across the desert, his lawyers
had not been idle and had secured at Austin another extradition
warrant from Governor Lanham, who, on receiving news of the arrest,
promptly instructed Captain Hughes by wire to assume charge of the
prisoner and to deliver him into the hands of the New York officer
to be conveyed to New York.

There now began such a legal battle as the State of Texas had never
known.  Hummel had been forced into his last ditch and was fighting
desperately for life.  Through Kaffenburgh he at once applied for a
new writ of habeas corpus in Nueces County and engaged counsel at
Corpus Christi to assist in fighting for the release of the
prisoner.  Precisely as Hummel had intended, Chief Wright of Nueces
rode into Alice and demanded the prisoner from Captain Hughes.  As
Hummel had NOT intended, Captain Hughes refused to surrender the
prisoner and told Chief Wright to go to--well, he told him that he
intended to obey his commander-in-chief, the Governor of Texas.

On February 20th, Hummel, through Kaffenburgh, attempted to get
another writ of habeas corpus in Bee County, and promptly the Bee
chief came buzzing over and demanded Dodge, but to him Hughes
replied even as he had spoken to Wright.

Excitement in Alice had now reached such a pitch that Judge Burns,
of the Federal Court, in Houston, ordered United States Marshal
John W. Vann, of Alice, to assume charge of the prisoner.  The
indomitable Hughes, however, paid no more attention to the United
States Marshal than he had to the local chiefs.  But the situation
was so delicate and the clash of authority might so easily have
resulted in bloodshed that it was finally agreed by all parties
that the best thing to do was to have the prisoner returned to
Houston in the JOINT custody of Captain Hughes of the Rangers and
the United States Marshal.

Jesse, through his counsel, in proper course, made application to
forfeit Dodge's bond and remand him to jail, but the Hummel
attorneys finally induced the Court, on the plea that to confine
Dodge in jail would be detrimental to his already badly impaired
health, to permit the prisoner to go free on a greatly increased
bond, nevertheless restricting his movements to Harris County,
Texas.

While Jesse had fought a winning battle up to this point he was at
the end of his resources so far as the extradition of the prisoner
was concerned, for Dodge was now at liberty, pending the decisions
upon the habeas corpus proceedings of the United States Circuit
Court of Appeals at Fort Worth, and the United States Supreme Court
at Washington.  But his orders were to BRING DODGE BACK TO New
York.  Hence, with the aid of some new men sent him from the North,
he commenced an even closer surveillance of the prisoner than ever
before by both day and night.

Meantime Kaffenburgh departed for New York, fleeing from the wrath
of Judge Burns, who had issued a summons for him for contempt of
the Federal Court on the ground that he had induced Dodge to
attempt to jump his bond.  In place of the blustering Kaffenburgh
was sent another member of the famous law firm of Howe and Hummel,
David May, an entirely different type of man.  May was as mild as a
day in June--as urbane as Kaffenburgh had been insolent.  He
fluttered into Houston like a white dove of peace with the
proverbial olive branch in his mouth.  From now on the tactics
employed by the representatives of Hummel were conciliatory in the
extreme.  Mr. May, however, did not long remain in Houston, as it
was apparent that there was nothing to be done by either side
pending the action of the courts, and in any event Dodge was
abundantly supplied with local counsel.  The time had now come when
Hummel must have begun to feel that the fates were against him and
that a twenty-year term in state prison was a concrete possibility
even for him.

In the meantime, Dodge and Bracken had taken up their headquarters
at the Rice Hotel in the most expensive suite of rooms in the
house, a new scheme for getting the prisoner beyond the reach of
the New York courts apparently having been concocted.  Dodge was
now indulged in every conceivable luxury and vice.  He was plunged
into every sort of excess, there was no debauchery which Bracken
could supply that was not his and their rapid method of existence
was soon the talk of the county and continued to be so for ten long
months.  There is more than one way to kill a cat and more than one
method of wiping out the only existing witness against a desperate
man striving to escape the consequences of crime.

Dodge's daily routine was somewhat as follows:  He never slept at
his own hotel, but arose in the morning between ten and eleven
o'clock, when he was at once visited by Bracken and supplied with
numerous drinks in lieu of the breakfast for which he never had any
desire.  At noon the two would have luncheon with more drinks.  In
the afternoon they would retire to the poolrooms and play the
races, and, when the races were over, they would then visit the
faro banks and gamble until midnight or later.  Later on they would
proceed to another resort on Louisiana Street where Dodge really
lived.  Here his day may be said to have begun and here he spent
most of his money, frequently paying out as much as fifty dollars a
night for wine and invariably ending in a beastly state of
intoxication.  It is quite probable that never in the history of
debauchery has any one man ever been so indulged in excesses of
every sort for the same period of time as Dodge was during the
summer and fall of 1904.  The fugitive never placed his foot on
mother earth.  If they were going only a block, Bracken called for
a cab, and the two seemed to take a special delight in making
Jesse, as Jerome's representative, spend as much money in cab hire
as possible.  The Houston jehus never again experienced so
profitable a time as they did during Dodge's wet season; and the
life of dissipation was continued until, from time to time, the
prisoner became so weak from its effects that he was forced to go
under the care of a physician.  A few days of abstinence always
restored his vitality and he would then start out upon another
round of pleasure.

During this period Jesse maintained a close and vigilant personal
espionage over the prisoner.  For over ten months he slept less
than four hours each day, his fatigue being increased by the
constant apprehension of treachery among his own men, and the
necessity of being ever on the alert to prevent some move on the
part of the defense to spirit the prisoner away.  During the summer
attempts were repeatedly made to evade the vigilance of Jesse and
his men and several desperate dashes were frustrated by them,
including one occasion when Bracken succeeded in rushing Dodge as
far as Galveston, where they were forced to abandon their design.

From time to time Bracken would disappear from Houston for a week
or ten days, stating on his return that he had been to New York,
after which there was invariably some new move to get the prisoner
away.  Time and space prevent giving a detailed account of all the
marches and counter-marches that took place in this battle of wit
against wit.

In August, 1904, Bracken made one of his periodical visits to New
York, and when he returned sought out Jesse and said: "Blocher, you
might as well be a good fellow and get yours while you can.  I mean
that Dodge is not going back to New York, even if it cost a million
dollars to prevent it."  A few days later Bracken sent a gambler
named Warner to Jesse, who offered the latter thirty-five hundred
dollars to get "lost" long enough for the prisoner to slip over to
Mexico.  Acting upon the advice of his attorney, Jesse encouraged
this attempt, under the belief that if he could get the Hummel
forces in the position of having attempted to bribe him the
prisoner's bail could then be forfeited and Dodge himself taken
into custody.  Hummel became wary, however, and apparently
abandoned for the time the idea of bribery.  Later on Bracken again
disappeared.  On his return a marked change was noticeable in his
demeanor and Jesse observed that he was in constant consultation
with Dodge, from which the detective drew the inference that some
last desperate move was to be made towards the escape of the
prisoner.

On one occasion Jesse saw Bracken showing Dodge a map and some
drawings on paper, which so excited his suspicions that he followed
the two with unremitting assiduity, and within a day or two was
rewarded through Bracken's carelessness with an opportunity for
going through the latter's coat pockets in the billiard room.  Here
he found a complete set of plans worked out in every detail for
spiriting the prisoner from San Antonio into Mexico during the
State Fair.  These plans were very elaborate, every item having
been planned out from the purchase of tickets, and passing of
baggage through the customs, to hotel accommodation in the City of
Mexico and Tampico, and steamship tickets from Tampico to Europe.

The plan had been to secure permission from the Court for Dodge to
leave Houston long enough ostensibly to attend the fair at San
Antonio and to "lose" him during the excitement and crowded
condition of the city at that time.

It is, of course, needless to say that these plans were abandoned
when Bracken discovered that Jesse had been forewarned.

Almost immediately thereafter the Circuit Court of Appeals at Fort
Worth, Texas, decided one of the habeas corpus cases adversely to
Dodge, but it still permitted him to retain his liberty pending the
final determination of the questions involved by the Supreme Court
at Washington.

The Hummel forces were apparently losing hope, however, for early
in October another attempt was made to bribe Jesse.  Bracken
entered his room one evening and informed him that he could get his
own price if he would only be a good fellow, and even went so far
as to exhibit a quantity of money which he stated was twenty-five
thousand dollars.  The only result of this offer was to lead Jesse
to redouble his precautions, for he argued that the situation must
indeed be acute when such an offer could be deemed worth while.
Thereafter it was obvious that the revelry of Dodge and his
companions was on the increase.  Accordingly Jesse added to his
force of assistants.

On December 2, 1904, Nathaniel Cohen, another member of the firm of
Howe and Hummel, arrived at Houston, and the next day the Supreme
Court at Washington decided the appeal in the habeas corpus against
the prisoner, who was at once ordered by Judge Burns into the
custody of United States Marshall William M. Hansen.

Things looked black indeed for Dodge and blacker still for Hummel.
How the little attorney, eating his midday lunch four thousand
miles away, at Pontin's restaurant on Franklin Street, must have
trembled in his patent leather boots!  His last emissary, Cohen, at
once procured an assistant by the name of Brookman and with him
proceeded to Wharton County, Texas, where they secured a new writ
of habeas corpus and induced the local sheriff, one Rich, to swear
in a posse comitatus of one hundred men for the purpose of coming
to Houston to take the prisoner by force of arms out of the hands
of the United States Marshal.

This was one of the most daring and desperate attempts made in
recent years to frustrate the law.  Jesse believes that the real
object of this posse was to precipitate a fight between themselves
and the Federal authorities.  It is not inconceivable that in such
an event Dodge might either have escaped or been killed.  The men
composing the posse were of the most desperate character, and
consisted largely of the so-called "feud factions" of Wharton
County, known as "The Wood Peckers" and "The Jay Birds."  Jesse has
been informed, on what he regards as reliable authority, that this
move cost the Hummel forces fifteen thousand dollars and that each
member of the posse received one hundred dollars for his
contemplated services in the "rescue" of the prisoner.  But civil
war, even on a small scale, cannot be indulged in without some
inkling of the facts becoming known to the authorities, and prior
to the receipt of the mandate of the Supreme Court, Judge Burns
ordered the prisoner removed to Galveston for safe keeping.

Thus the long, expensive, and arduous struggle came finally to an
end, for Judge Burns in due course ordered that Charles F. Dodge
should be conveyed to New York in the personal custody of the
United States Marshal and delivered by him to the New York
authorities "within the borders of that State."  Such an order was,
of course, exceedingly unusual, if not almost unheard of, but it
was rendered absolutely necessary by the powerful influence and
resources, as well as the unscrupulous character, of those
interested in securing Dodge's disappearance.

In order to thwart any plans for releasing the prisoner by violence
or otherwise, and to prevent delay through the invoking of legal
technicalities, Hansen and Jesse decided to convey Dodge to New
York by water, and on the 16th of December the marshal and his five
deputies boarded a Mallory Line steamer at Galveston and arrived in
New York with their prisoner on the evening of December 23d.

Dodge reached New York a physical wreck.  How he was induced to
tell the whole truth after he had pleaded guilty to the charge
against him is a story in itself.  A complete reaction from his
dissipation now occurred and for days his life was despaired of.
Jesse, too, was, as the expression is, "all in," and the only
persons who were still able to appreciate the delights of New York
were the stalwart marshal and his boys, who for some time were
objects of interest as they strolled along Broadway and drank "deep
and hearty" in the cafes.  To the assistants in the District
Attorney's office they were heroes and were treated as such.

How Dodge finally testified against Hummel on the witness stand has
already been told.  As they say downtown, if Jerome had never done
anything else, he would have "made good" by locking up Abe Hummel.
No one ever believed he would do it.  But Jerome never would have
locked up Hummel without Jesse.  And, as Jesse says with a laugh,
leaning back in his chair and taking a long pull on his cigar, "I
guess I would not do it again--no, I WOULD not do it again for all
the money you could give me.  The wonder is that I came out of it
alive."  When the reader comes to think about it he will probably
agree with him.



P. H. Woodward


Adventures in the Secret Service of the Post-Office Department*


* The author of the pages that follow was chief special agent of
the Secret Service of the United States Post-Office Department
during pioneer and romantic days.  The curious adventures related
are partly from his own observation, and partly from the notebooks
of fellow officers, operating in many sections of the Country.

The stories are true, although, of course, justice demands that in
some cases persons and places be usually disguised under fictitious
names.

The stories have interest not only for their exciting play of
honest wits against dishonest, but also for the cautions they sound
against believing things "too good to be true" from the pen of
strangers.


There is a class of post-office thieves who make a specialty of
rifling the registered letters that pass through their hands in
transit on journeys of greater or less length.  Some of them have
managed operations very shrewdly, in the evident belief that they
had discovered an infallible method for doing the work and at the
same time escaping detection.  Too late they generally learn by sad
experience that no patents can be taken out for the protection of
crime.

In this class of cases something tangible always remains to exhibit
the peculiar style of workmanship belonging to each; and it would
often surprise the uninitiated to learn how many traits of
character, what indexes of habit and vocation, can be picked up by
careful study of the minute points presented for inspection.
Unless, however, an agent cultivates a taste for thoroughness even
to details and trifles that might at first view appear utterly
insignificant, he will never succeed in interpreting the
hieroglyphics.

At intervals of two or three weeks, beginning in the summer of
1871, registered packages passing to and fro from Chicago to a town
in the interior of Dakota Territory, which for convenience will be
called Wellington,--though that was not its name,--were reported to
the department as rifled.  As the season wore on, the complaints
increased in frequency.  Under the old method of doing business at
headquarters, which often amounted practically to a distribution of
the cases about equally "among the boys," the agent stationed at
Chicago received most of them at first; then a part were sent to an
agent in Iowa; and as the number multiplied, Furay, at Omaha, was
favored with an occasional sprinkling.  Under the present more
perfect system, great care is taken to group together all the
complaints growing out of each series of depredations, to locate
the seat of trouble by comparisons carefully made in the department
itself, and to give everything bearing on the subject to the
officer specifically charged with the investigation.

March came around before Mr. Furay found time to give personal
attention to this particular thief.  He then passed over the route
to Wellington, eighty miles by stagecoach from the nearest railroad
station, with ten intermediate offices.  All the packages remained
over night at Sioux City, Iowa, a fact sufficiently important to
invite close scrutiny; but the detective soon became satisfied that
he must look elsewhere for the robber.  His suspicions were next
directed to another office, where also the mails lay over night;
but the postmaster bore a countenance so open and honest that he
too was eliminated from the problem.

He continued on to Wellington, skirmishing along the line, and
observing the faces of the postmasters; but these studies in
physiognomy threw no light on the mystery, as the officials of the
department on the route, though far removed from central
supervision, seemed to be all that their affectionate uncle at
Washington could wish.  On the return trip the detective was
equally observant and equally perplexed.  At that season the stage
stopped for the night at Hannibal; but there, likewise, the
postmaster shared the honest looks that seemed to prevail through
eastern Dakota.

Proceeding on, the passengers dined at Raven's Nest, where one
Michael Mahoney, Sr., kept a small store and the post-office,
running also--with the aid of a young son and a son-in-law--a farm.
The store was managed by Michael Mahoney, Jr., a married son, who
happened to be absent both when the special agent went up and when
he returned.  The face of the old man indicated that he was
vicious, ignorant, and unscrupulous; but clearly he was not sharp
enough to execute nice work like that under investigation.

With the exception of a general knowledge of the offices, the
special agent returned but little wiser for the trip, and
concluded, as the best that could be done under the circumstances,
to allow the bird to flutter a little longer before renewing the
hunt.  Meanwhile the thief grew more reckless, and the papers that
came to Mr. Furay, though covering a fraction only of the
depredations, located the thief on the lower end of the route,
within fifty miles of the terminus.

During the summer one or two other agents took up the matter
cursorily, but made no discoveries.  In the meantime Mr. Furay was
kept too busily occupied with a succession of important cases in
Nebraska to give much thought to the outlying territory of Dakota.
At length, in September, he went carefully over the papers that had
accumulated during his late prolonged absences, and soon knew
exactly where to look for the chap who had so long plundered the
public with impunity.

For some time Chicago had been closing registered package envelopes
with wax, which, on this route at least, effectually secured them
against molestation.  Imitating the example, Camden, Dakota, began
to do the same; but, having no seal suitable for the purpose,
improvised a substitute by using the flat surface of a rasp.

Camden placed the wax near each end of the envelope, which
materially interfered with the game of the thief, because it was
just here that he operated.  Evidently piqued that a rural
postmaster should presume to outwit him, he studied hard to devise
some means for opening these particular packages without leaving
such traces of his handiwork as would attract the notice of other
officials through whose hands they might subsequently pass.  The
effort was crowned with a measurable degree of success, for Mr.
Furay, at the general overhauling referred to, was the first to
discover that the seal had been tampered with.

As it was necessary to break one of the seals, the object of the
robber was to restore it as nearly as possible to its original
appearance; and to effect this he used a dampened thimble, rolling
it over the wax while the latter was hot.  There was but one
envelope of the kind in the lot, but it told the whole story to the
eye that could penetrate its meaning.  As the thimble passed along
the edge, it left the mark of the rim, then a smooth, narrow band,
followed by pointed elevations closely resembling continuous lines,
thus:

========
--------
........
........

On the opposite side of the same seal the wax flattened out so as
to cover a good deal of surface; and, to give it the desired
appearance, the manipulator resorted to the thimble again, but this
time USED A DIFFERENT ONE, the indentations on the surface being
perceptibly finer and more shallow.

The violation of that single seal betrayed the thief, for the
detective at once inferred that the job was done in a store where
the operator had access to a variety of thimbles.  Only one was
required; and no person but a merchant would be likely to have more
than one within convenient reach.  In a store, however, it would be
natural to take down a boxful, and place it on the counter, to be
selected from at random.  One is picked up, used, and thrown back.
The operator now finds another spot that requires attention, and
without waiting to hunt for the thimble that has already served as
a seal,--for the wax is cooling and no time must be lost,--grasps
the first that comes to hand, too absorbed in the main issue to
give a thought to what would pass as an insignificant subsidiary
trifle.  No rascal is sharp enough to guard every point,--a general
fact that illustrates over and over again, in the experience of
man, the seminal truth that in a mercenary and physical as well as
in a high and spiritual, sense there is neither wisdom nor profit
outside of the limits of absolute integrity and unflinching
uprightness.

The detective laid aside the papers with a light heart, knowing
that at last he was complete master of the situation.  Below Camden
on the infested route the post-office was kept in a store at two
points only, and in one of those no thimbles were sold.  The clew
pointed unerringly to Raven's Nest as the spot where alone the
requisite conditions to account for the imprint on the violated
seal were to be found.  Thither the officer accordingly went; and
the moment his eye rested on Michael Mahoney, Jr., he recognized
the heaven-branded features of a thief.

Returning to Sioux City, he telegraphed to another agent, who had a
large number of the cases growing out of the robberies, to come on
at once.  The two men took stations, one on each side of Raven's
Nest, and in thirty hours they arrested the youthful criminal, who
in the interval stole four decoy letters, and paid a portion of the
contents to one of the officers who was testing him.

Mr. Furay collected from the thief and his relatives the full
amount stolen from the mails during the entire continuance of the
depredations, restoring the money to the rightful owners dollar for
dollar.  Young Mahoney made a written confession, supplemented by
three or four codicils relating to items which, to use his own
language, "at first did not to me occur."  He was tried the
following February, and sentenced to the penitentiary for the term
of three years.

Within fifteen days from the time when the doors of the prison were
closed upon the son, the villainous old father, acting perhaps on
the theory that no two shots ever strike in exactly the same place,
began also to rob the mails.  In due time Mr. Furay again appeared
on the scene and took the old reprobate away a prisoner.  When the
trial came on, a material witness for the prosecution happened to
be absent, the lack of whose testimony proved fatal to the case,
for after hanging a day and a night, the jury brought in a verdict
of acquittal.



AN ERRING SHEPHERD


The ingenuity and perseverance of the fraternity of swindlers is
only equaled by the gullibility and patience of their dupes.
During the flush times that followed the war, immense fortunes were
suddenly acquired by a class of cheats who operated on the
credulity of the public through gift enterprises, lotteries, and
other kindred schemes.  Most of the large concerns established
their headquarters in New York City, flooding the entire country,
particularly the South and West, with lithographic circulars,
written apparently with the pen for the exclusive benefit of the
recipient, and showing how fortunes could be securely made by
remitting specified sums to the houses in question.  Some of the
bogus firms simply pocketed the cash of correspondents without
pretending to render any equivalent whatever; while others, no more
honest, but a little more politic, sent forth worthless jewelry and
other stuff by the bushel.

One of the most villainous and at the same time successful devices
was built up on the offer of counterfeit currency at a heavy
discount.  In substance, the circulars, emanating from different
parties, and from the same parties under different names, were all
alike.  They usually began with an insidious compliment to the
person addressed, to the effect that from trustworthy sources the
writer had heard of him as a man of more than ordinary capacity and
shrewdness, and, emboldened by the high estimate placed upon his
abilities by persons well qualified to judge, had selected him as
the very individual to aid in securing a fortune for both with
"absolute safety."  The circular usually goes on to state that the
writer is a first-class engraver,--indeed "one of the most expert
in the United States,"--while his partner is a first-class printer.
Hence the firm possess unrivaled facilities for imitating the
national currency.  The recipient is particuarly cautioned to
beware of a class of miscreants who infest the city of New York and
advertise throughout the country the goods that he manufactures,
but send nothing except rubbish.  The "original Doctor Jacobs"
excoriates unmercifully the whole tribe of swindlers whose
rascalities debauch and bring odium upon the trade.  He exhorts the
gentleman of great reputed "shrewdness and sagacity" to observe the
utmost caution in conducting operations, and gives him explicit
directions how to forward the purchase-money.

Several years ago a preacher of the gospel, stationed not far from
the northern frontier of the republic, received by mail one of the
seductive missives of Ragem & Co., of New York City.  The douceur
opened with the usual complimentary references to the peculiar
personal fitness of the clergyman for the proposed enterprise, and
went on to state that, in exchange for genuine greenbacks, Ragem &
Co. would furnish in the proportion of fifty to one imitations so
absolutely perfect that the most experienced bank officers could
not distinguish the difference.  Rev. Zachariah Sapp,--for such was
the euphonious name of the preacher,--after an attentive perusal of
the flattering proposal, deposited the document in his coat-pocket
for convenience of reference.  Having pondered the subject for a
day or two, he decided to write to Ragem & Co. for more explicit
information.

Divining with the peculiar instinct of the guild the character of
the fish now nibbling at the naked hook, the cheat resolved to risk
a little bait, and accordingly sent by return mail a genuine one-
dollar note, with a written invitation both for a reply and a
personal conference.

Never before did the Rev. Zachariah Sapp subject a piece of paper
to such scrutiny.  Both with the naked eye and with a microscope,--
a relic of collegiate days,--he studied the engravings and filigree
work.  Detail by detail he compared the supposed imitation with
bills of known genuineness without being able to discover the
slightest point of variation between them.  Paper, printing, and
engraving seemed to be absolutely perfect.  While the study was
progressing, the imagination of the clergyman soared through the
empyrean of dazzling expectations.  Why continue to toil hard for a
small pittance when the golden apples were hanging within easy
reach?  Why drag out an existence in penury when wealth and its
joys were thrust upon him?

Zachariah, however, was prudent and thrifty--indeed rather more
thrifty in the estimation of parishioners than befitted one who
held by right of faith a title-deed to mansions in the skies.
Almost as soon would he risk his future inheritance as peril on a
doubtful venture the few hundred dollars snugly saved up for a wet
day by prudence and economy.

Not willing to rely entirely on his own judgment, he rather
reluctantly decided to call on a banker in an adjacent town, with
whom he enjoyed a slight acquaintance.  In thinking the matter over
he was greatly perplexed to determine how to introduce the subject.
Of course it would not answer to allow the cashier to fathom his
secret purpose, and yet he was oppressed with a vague consciousness
that only a translucent film hid his thought from the world.  Once
or twice, in driving over on the unfamiliar errand, weak and
irresolute he half resolved to turn back, but greed finally
prevailed, and he kept on to the village.

With a strong but unsatisfactory effort to appear at ease, he
sauntered into the bank.  After the usual interchange of greetings,
he nervously remarked, "Brother Hyde, as I was coming this way to-
day to call on Brother Tompkins, I have taken the liberty to drop
in to ask you a question on a matter in your line."

"Very well," replied the banker, "I shall be happy to serve you."

"I had a transaction a few days ago," resumed the clergyman, "with
a peddler,--an entire stranger to me,--who, in making change, gave
me a number of bills which I have reason to suspect are
counterfeits.  I desire your opinion."

"Please let me see them," said Mr. Hyde.

He took the one-dollar note from the hand of the unfaithful pastor,
and after scanning it a moment, inquired, "What is the matter with
it?"

"Is it good?" queried the anxious owner.

"I wish I had my safe full of the same sort," answered the banker.
"There is nothing bad about the bill.  What makes you think so?
Perhaps you have shown me the wrong one.  Let me see the others."

"I must have left the rest at home," replied the preacher, fumbling
among the compartments of the pocket-book.

Having accomplished the object of his mission without perpetrating,
as he thought, any disastrous blunder, Mr. Sapp brought the
interview to a close with a few commonplace remarks, and hurried
away to enjoy in solitary self-communion the thick-crowding visions
of future affluence.

With the last doubt satisfactorily overcome, the plans of the
prospective millionaire rapidly took shape.  He could raise five
hundred dollars, which at the proposed rate of interchange would
purchase twenty-five thousand of the "absolutely perfect
imitations."  The sum seemed vast--incalculable.  His imagination,
hitherto bound down by the narrow circumstances of remote rural
life, staggered while trying to grasp the conception of so much
wealth.  Like the mysteries of time and space, it appeared too
grand for comprehension.  Then his reveries strayed into another
channel.  What noble fellows were Ragem & Co.  Why, among forty
millions of people, did they pick out him, an unknown clergyman,
living in an obscure place hundreds of miles from the metropolis,
to be the favored recipient of untold wealth?  Surely, this is a
special Providence.  Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without
His knowledge.  He watches over his own.  Suddenly the erring
clergyman feels a terrible pull at his heart-strings.  What right
has he, about to betray a sacred trust, and engage in operations
branded as infamous by the laws of the land, to claim the watchful
care of Providence?  Will not the all-seeing eye follow him?  Will
not the omnipotent hand strike him heavily in wrath?  The poor man
wipes the cold perspiration from his forehead, and wonders if it
will pay.

But he has paltered too long, and now the devil claims him for his
own.

Returning home, Sapp wrote to Ragem & Co., stating the amount of
his available resources, and saying that upon a given day and hour
he would meet them at the appointed rendezvous.  On the following
Sunday the congregation were startled at the close of the afternoon
services by an extraordinary announcement from the pulpit.

Before pronouncing the benediction the pastor said: "I take this
opportunity to communicate to you collectively a piece of personal
intelligence which I have hitherto kept secret.  Under the will of
a relative who recently died in the State of Michigan, I inherit a
large sum--to me, with my humble wants, a very large sum.  By
appointment, I am to meet the executor of the estate this week in
New York City to receive the first installment of the legacy.  I do
not propose to leave you, my dear parishioners, but to remain among
you and toil with you as I have done for so many years.  A goodly
portion at least of my inheritance I intend to invest in this
community, that neighbors and friends may share jointly in my
prosperity.  I trust I may be guided to make a wise use of the
talents thus unexpectedly, and I may say providentially, committed
to my keeping.  We know from the teachings of Scripture that wealth
brings great responsibilities, and that we shall be held to a
strict account for the manner in which we employ it.  May your
prayers go with me."

The congregation crowded around the pastor with congratulations.
Particularly demonstrative were the ebullitions of two or three
brothers who saw a chance of exchanging sundry unsalable
possessions for slices in the inheritance.

Mr. Sapp reached New York City in the evening, and the momentous
interview was to take place at an early hour the next day.  Sleep
came in brief and fitful snatches.  But the stars roll on in their
majestic spheres, regardless of mortal hopes and fears.  At length
day broke, when the preacher rose from bed anxious and unrefreshed.
A little before the appointed time he proceeded to a certain
building, and having mounted two flights of stairs, saw the magic
number on the door in front of him.  As the clock struck he
entered.  Agreeably to a preconcerted plan, he wiped the right
corner of his mouth with a white handkerchief, and nodded three
times.  The only person in the room, a well-dressed and apparently
affable gentleman, responded by wiping the left corner of his mouth
with a red silk handkerchief, and nodding three times.  The signal
is correctly answered: it is he!  So far all works beautifully,
with every promise kept.  The bill was a perfect imitation, the
engraver is on hand to a second.


             "Two truths are told,
     As happy prologues to the swelling act
     Of the imperial theme."


The fellow passing under the name of Ragem & Co. welcomed the new
arrival cordially.  "Ah," said he "your promptness and
circumspection show that I am not disappointed in my man.  I see
that you come up to the full measure of my expectations.  Do you
know I am a remarkable judge of character?  In fact, I seldom or
never make a mistake.  We are both in luck."

"I was trained to punctuality from early youth," replied the
preacher; and proceeding directly to business, without further
circumlocution, continued, "I succeeded in raising five hundred
dollars, which entitles me under the agreement to twenty-five
thousand."

From an inner pocket, after removing a number of pins, he produced
six one hundred dollar notes, saying, by way of explanation, "For
greater security I converted my funds into bills of large
denomination.  One I reserve for contingencies; the other five are
for you."

"Your money is here in the safe," said Ragem, taking the five
notes, and turning toward the safe as if to unlock it.  But the
scoundrel evidently reasoned that it would be silly to remain
content with the five when he could just as easily capture the
sixth.

Walking back, he remarked, "I want to show you that my large bills
are just as perfect as the small ones"; and, as if for purposes of
comparison, he took the remaining note from the hand of the
clergyman.

At this moment began a fearful knocking on a side door, that
threatened the speedy demolition of the frail barrier.  "Run, run,"
whispered Ragem, as if in the extremity of terror, "the police are
on us."

The preacher needed no second invitation, fear of exposure giving
wings to his feet.  Almost at a bound he cleared the two flights of
stairs and emerged into the street, walking several blocks, and
turning a number of corners before he dared to look back.

The bona fide occupant of the room where these parties met had no
share whatever in the nefarious transactions carried on there.
Through the treachery of the janitor, Ragem was permitted at
certain hours to make use of the apartment for the purpose of
keeping appointments with his victims.  A confederate stationed on
the outside delivered the knocks as soon as customers were plucked
and it became desirable to get rid of their company.  Occasional
hints of improper practices reached the ear of the real lessee, but
these had never yet taken such shape as to give a decisive clew to
the trouble, dupes for the most part pocketing their losses in
silence.

After an interval of two or three hours Mr. Sapp plucked up courage
to return.  Having mounted the stairs, he entered the room warily.
His late partner was not there.  A stalwart gentleman, who seemed
to be the proprietor, 1ooked up inquiringly, and was not a little
puzzled when the visitor supplemented the performance of wiping the
right corner of his mouth by three deliberate nods.  "What can I do
for you to-day?" inquired the gentleman, rising.

"You are, I presume, a partner of Mr. Ragem," answered Sapp.  "I
see he is out.  Our business this morning was unfortunately
interrupted by the police, and I have returned to complete it."

"What business?" asked the proprietor, in undisguised astonishment.

Now the preacher made the very natural mistake of supposing that
the surprise manifested by his interlocutor was a mere matter of
policy and caution.  Hence he proceeded to explain.  "Ragem must
have told you.  I am the gentleman who gave him the five hundred
dollars, and he said that my twenty-five thousand were locked up in
the safe."

The proprietor did not wait to hear more, but seizing the
affrighted creature by the collar, thundered forth, "I have heard
of you before.  You are the villain, are you, who has been turning
my office into a den of thieves?  I have caught you at last!"

Awaking to a partial comprehension of the situation, the poor
wretch stammered forth, "There must be some mistake.  My name is a--
is a--is a Smith--Smith--John Smith."

"John Smith, is it?" growled the proprietor.  "Well, all I have to
say is, John Smith, if not the biggest is the most numerous rascal
in the city.  John, come along to the police station."

And John went, billows of trouble rolling over him as the waters of
the Red Sea closed over Pharaoh.  Vain the effort to recall
consolatory texts pertinent to the occasion!  He was sorely
chastened indeed, but the stripes were inflicted not in love but in
wrath.  He mourned, yet whence could he look for comfort?

To avoid a worse fate, the prisoner revealed his identity,
exhibited the correspondence from "Ragem & Co.," and made a full
statement of the facts.  The painful news reached the church
shortly after the return of the pastor, when his pulpit career came
to an ignominious end.  He soon removed to the far West, hoping to
bury his disgrace in the shades of the primeval forest.

The fall of Rev. Zachariah Sapp sounds a note of warning not
without its lessons.  The only safety in dealing with temptation is
to repel its insidious approaches from the outset.  Whoever listens
in patience to the siren whisper is half lost already.  Human
experience abundantly confirms the divine wisdom of the command,
"Get thee behind me, Satan," as the one sole safe way of meeting
evil advances.  At the close of well-spent, useful lives, myriads
can thank a kind Providence, not that they have been stronger than
others who have turned out differently, but that they have been
tried less.  Walking among unseen perils, none can without danger
of ruin discard even for a moment the armor of honesty and truth.



AN ASPIRANT FOR CONGRESS


A few years ago, the "Hon." John Whimpery Brass, of Georgia, one of
the "thoughtful patriots" of the period, who now and then found
time to lay aside the cares of statecraft to nurse little private
jobs of his own, allured by the seductive offers of "Wogan & Co."
of New York City, wrote to that somewhat mythical concern proposing
to become their agent for the circulation of the "queer."  Even
after receiving the first installment of their wares, the honorable
gentleman did not comprehend that the firm dealt exclusively in
sawdust, not in currency.  He wrote again, complaining that, after
a journey of sixty miles over a rough road to the nearest reliable
express office, he found nothing but a worthless package, marked
"C. O. D.," awaiting him.  Did Wogan & Co. distrust either his
parts or fidelity?  He ventured to assert that no man in the State
could serve them so effectually.  He had just run for Congress, and
though beaten at the polls by "fraud," intended to contest the seat
with the chances of success in his favor.  The mountaineers among
whom he lived did not care whether the money in their pockets was
good or bad so long as it circulated.  He could put thousands of
counterfeits afloat without the slightest fear of detection.  His
constituency believed in him and would stand by him.  Currency was
very scarce in that congressional district, and it would really be
doing his people a great favor to give them more.  After setting
forth the mutual benefits to accrue from trusting him, he appealed
to Wogan & Co. with the vehemence and energy of the sewing-machine
man, or life-insurance agent, to send on the goods without further
delay.  They should never regret dealing with him, his character
and standing being a sufficient guaranty that he could not play
false.  He was acting in good faith, and expected like treatment in
return.

Unfortunately for the political aspirations of "Hon." John Whimpery
Brass, the authorities not long after made a descent upon the den
of Wogan & Co., finding a great many letters from credulous fools,
and a large supply of sawdust--their only stock in trade.  The
missives of the prospective congressman were published, thus
gaining much more extensive currency than he proposed to give to
the imitation greenbacks.  It was supposed that the noisy fellow
would slink away to some cave in his native mountains, and never
show his brazen face among honest people again.  But the impudence
of "Hon." John Whimpery Brass rose to the level of the emergency.
Instead of hiding or hanging himself, he published a card
representing that he embarked in the scheme for the purpose of
entrapping Wogan & Co. and bringing them to justice.

Pathetic was the spectacle, showing the confidence of an ingenuous
soul in its own prowess, of the volunteer detective, digging
parallels on the southern spurs of the Blue Ridge for the capture
of the wily swindler a thousand miles away!  Armed with a kernel of
corn, the doughty gosling sets forth to catch the wicked fox that
is preying on the flock!  If the bold mountaineers, the
constituency of "Hon." John Whimpery Brass, cannot commend the
discretion displayed by the projector of the enterprise, they must
certainly admire his pluck.  In face of the odds, few goslings
would volunteer.

Perhaps the card might have been accepted by the more trustful
class of adherents as a satisfactory explanation of the letters,
had not the aspiring statesman in course of time fallen under the
ban of the law for defrauding widows of their pensions, the
campaign against Wogan & Co. having so completely exhausted the
virtue of the amateur who planned it as to leave no residue to
fructify in subsequent operations.



THE FORTUNE OF SETH SAVAGE


At one time the bogus-lottery men drove a thrifty business, but the
efforts, virtually co-operative, of the post-office department and
of the legislatures of the older states, have latterly pretty
effectually forced them into the wilderness.  The managers forage
on the same class of people as the sawdust swindlers, procuring
lists of names in the same way.  A common method of procedure is to
inclose with advertisements announcing the prizes, together with
the place and date of drawing, one or more tickets duly numbered.
Great confidence is expressed in the personal fitness of the party
addressed, who is requested to act as agent for the sale of the
tickets.  A few weeks later another letter is sent to the intended
victim, informing him that the ticket of a given number forwarded
to him at such a date had drawn a prize, the value of which is
variously stated from a few hundred to many thousand dollars.  He
is then requested to send immediately ten dollars--more or less--
for the ticket, perhaps ten or twenty more for additional charges,
when the full face value of the prize will be forwarded promptly by
express, check on New York, or in any other way the recipient may
direct.  He is also told to antedate the letter, the intermediary
promising to blur the postmark to correspond, so that the
remittance may appear to have been made prior to the drawing.  In
conclusion the writer adroitly suggests that he desires the
fortunate man to exhibit the money to his neighbors, stating how he
obtained it, and mentioning particularly the address of the agent
from whom the ticket was purchased, the object being to create an
excitement in the place with a view to large sales for the next
drawing.

Even of a trick as transparent as this the victims are counted by
thousands, exposures and warnings being alike disregarded.  The
infatuation of a certain class of ignorant and credulous people is
well illustrated by the case of Seth Savage, a poor man possessed
of a few acres in the vicinity of a small village in Vermont.  One
day, when a special agent of wide experience happened to be
visiting the post-office, Seth received a letter, the perusal of
which threw him into a frenzy of excitement.

"What is the matter?" inquired the postmaster.  "You seem to have
good news."

"Look a-here," replied Seth, holding forth the missive in his
shriveled and bony fingers, "for nigh on to sixty-five year, Mr.
Martin, I've fit and work'd and work'd and fit jest for my vittles
and drink.  Neow when I'm tew old tew 'joy it, a fortin comes to
me."

"Is that so?" answered Mr. Martin.  "I am very glad; but tell me,
what is it?  Your neighbors will all be glad to hear of your good
luck."

"Read that," said Seth, handing him the letter triumphantly.

The postmaster read the manuscript.  One Dewitt of New York City
assured Mr. Savage that a certain ticket sent to him a month before
had drawn a prize of three thousand dollars; that on receipt of
thirty-five dollars in a letter antedated according to directions,
the full amount would be forwarded to him.

"Surely, Seth," expostulated the postmaster, "you are not going to
be fooled in this way.  Dewitt is a humbug, a swindler."

"Neow, heow dew yeou know that?" inquired Seth.  "Has he ever
fool'd yeou?"

"I don't deal with that sort of people," replied Mr. Martin mildly.
"I dislike to see anyone wronged, especially a neighbor.  Here is a
gentleman who knows all about such matters."  And Seth was formally
introduced to the special agent, who took pains to explain the
character of the swindle fully.

The officer left the village with the pleasant assurance that his
brief visit had contributed at least toward the rescue of one poor
object from the jaws of the devourer.

After all, however, Seth was not convinced.  By selling his only
cow he managed to swell his scanty stock of cash to the requisite
sum, which he sent to Dewitt, fully expecting to be able in a few
days to confound the postmaster by the actual display of his newly
gotten wealth.  The dupe, who had invested a goodly portion of his
scanty means in the venture, waited long if not patiently.  At
length, after the expiration of the last hope, Mr. Martin inquired,
"How did it happen, Seth, that you threw away your money on that
lottery scamp, when we showed you that the whole thing was a
cheat?"

"Wall, neow, arter it's all lost," replied Seth, "I'll tell yeou
jest heow 'twas.  Human natur' is naturally suspectin'.  I tho't
yeou and that ar' t'other postoffis fellah want'd to git the prize
for yeourselfs; an' I didn't mean to be beat so."



A WISH UNEXPECTEDLY GRATIFIED


When the bogus-lottery men were driven out of the large cities by
the vigor of the postal authorities, they tried for a while to
operate from small country towns by collusion with dishonest
postmasters.  As the delinquencies of the offenders were
successively brought to light, their heads rolled into the basket
at the foot of the official guillotine.  The swindlers, however,
succeeded in bribing fresh victims, and for a time cunning and
duplicity managed with tolerable success to maintain a foothold
against the power of the department.

Among other similar swindles, sealed circulars were at one time
scattered broadcast over the more remote states, announcing that on
a given date the drawing for a series of magnificent prizes would
take place at Livingston Hall, No. 42 Elm Avenue, Wington Junction,
Connecticut.  Patrons were urged to remit the purchase-money for
tickets promptly, as there would be no postponement of the grand
event under any circumstances.  "Fortune," continued the glittering
advertisement, "knocks once at every one's door, and she is now
knocking at yours."

As usual, multitudes swallowed the bait, but some, instead of
sending the greenbacks to Highfalutin & Co., forwarded the
circulars to the department.  Thereupon special agent Sharretts was
instructed to visit Wington Junction, with the view of learning
whether the postmaster was properly discharging his duties.  Taking
an early opportunity to perform the mission, he alighted at the
station one morning, and proceeded to survey the town, which
consisted of four or five houses scattered along the highway for a
distance of half a mile.  "Livingston Hall" and "Elm Avenue" were
nowhere visible.  It was apparent that "No. 42" on any avenue was a
remote contingency not likely to arise in the present generation.

Having previously ascertained that the postmaster was also switch-
tender at the junction, and that the cares of the office devolved
on his wife, the officer walked up to a keen-looking man in front
of the little round switch-house, whose energies were devoted
exclusively at that moment to the mastication of a huge quid of
tobacco, and who, after a prolonged scrutiny of the stranger,
answered his salutation in an attenuated drawl,' "Meornin', sir."

"Will you be kind enough to tell me, sir, where Mr. Morris, the
postmaster, can be found?" asked the agent.

"Wall, I guess my name's Morris.  What kin I do fur yeou?"

"Mr. Morris, I should like a few minutes' private conversation on
business of great importance, which can be so managed as to turn
out advantageously to us both.  I do not wish to be overheard or
interrupted.  In these times even blank walls have ears, you know."

The last suggestion seemed to serve as a passport to the confidence
of the postmaster.  Leading the way into the switch-house, he
remarked, "Come in heear.  Neow, what is it?"

"The fact is, Mr. Morris, some friends of mine propose to go into a
little speculation, which will involve a large correspondence; and
for reasons that I need not specify to a man like you, they do not
wish to have every ragtag, bobtail post-office clerk poring over
their letters, and asking impertinent questions at the delivery-
window.  If they can find a shrewd, square man, who knows how to
keep his mouth shut, and who can't be fooled, that for a handsome
consideration will put the letters away in a safe place till called
for, they are willing to make an arrangement that will be
profitable all around.  You have been recommended as just the
person.  I am told that you generally know which side your bread is
buttered, and have called to see if we can't arrange to pull
together."

"'Nuff said," ejaculated Morris, with a sly wink.  "I know what
yeou want, but my wife is the one to fix things.  I don't have
nuthin' to dew with the letters.  Sue 'tends to everything.  The
folks as we'se a-workin' for said we must be plaguey keerful about
the deetecters.  I'll bet nun on 'em can't play it on my wife tho'.
If they dew, they'll have to git up arly in the mornin'."

With that he thrust his head out of the window, and yelled: "Sue,
Sue!"

As the sound died away, a tall, raw-boned female, from whose cheeks
the bloom of youth had faded a number of years before, emerged from
the side door of a two-story cottage, about eighty rods distant,
and walked briskly to the switch-house, where she was introduced to
the stranger as "my wife."

After a little preliminary skirmishing, she invited the agent to go
over to the cottage.  Having been duly ushered into the "best
room," he embellished for her benefit the story already told to the
husband.

"I think I kin 'commodate yeou," she broke forth, "but yeou'll have
to pay putty well for't.  Laws me, I'm told--and I've ways o'
heerin' 'bout these things--that the deetecters are jest as likely
as not to come a-swoopin' deown enny minnit.  Yeou know, if they
feound it out, we'd be smash'd."

Her terms were ten dollars a week.  Highfalutin & Co. paid six, but
she understood the business a great deal better now than when she
made the bargain with them.  The agent thought the price rather
high, but finally consented to contract at that figure.

Then, as if troubled by an after-thought, he said, "Madam, how do I
know but some of these 'deetecters' may come around, and, seeing my
letters, get me into difficulty?"

"Why, laws a' mercy," said she, "don't be skeer'd.  Yeou jest leave
that to me.  The minnit them air letters gits here, I hides 'em in
that bewro-draw'r," pointing to an article of furniture in the
corner.

"Is it a safe place?" queried the agent.

"Yas, it is," answered the woman.  "Got it half full neow.  Carry
the key in my pocket."

She gave a grin, intended for a knowing smile, in admiration of her
own cleverness.

"I believe the hiding-place is tolerably secure," replied the
officer, with the air of one who desired to be convinced, but had
not yet reached the point of full assurance.

"You seem to be very particl'r and diffikilt to satisfy," continued
Mrs. Morris; "but, if yeou don't believe it, jest come and see for
you'sef."

She led the way to the bureau, opened the drawer, and, raising a
plaid cotton handkerchief, displayed the contraband letters by the
score.  All were directed to the lottery firm, and were turned over
to the knave from time to time as it suited his convenience to call
for them.  As no such firm did business at Wington Junction, it was
the duty of the postmaster to forward to the department, as
fictitious and undeliverable, all letters bearing the address of
the swindlers.  In similar cases neglect to obey the regulation was
treated as sufficient ground for instant removal.

More fully pleased with the result of the examination than the
woman surmised, the officer resumed: "I see you are very particular
about your methods of doing business, and do not mean to be caught
napping.  The arrangement we are about to enter into is a very
important one, and, as you are not postmaster, your husband will
have to be present to witness and ratify the bargain."

"Bless yeour soul," replied she, "it's all right.  I 'tend to all
the biznis.  My husband doesn't bother hissef abeout it in the
least."

"Madam," answered the officer, "pardon me.  I had my training in a
large city, and am accustomed to pay minute attention to every
detail.  Your husband is the principal in this case, and must
ratify the agreement to make it binding.  Of course you will derive
all the benefit, but his presence is essential as a matter of
form."

Apparently satisfied, she called for "John," who replied promptly
to the summons.

"Mr. Morris," said the officer, "your wife has agreed to keep my
letters for me--"

"Yaas," broke in the postmaster.  "I know'd she would.  Yeou'll
find she'll dew it right, tew.  Nobody can't come enny tricks on
her--can they, Sue?  I wish one o' 'em durn'd deetecters would come
around, jest tew see heow she'd pull the wool over 'im.  I wudn't
ax enny better fun;" and he indulged in a fit of loud cachinnation
at the absurdity of supposing that anyone could match in sharpness
his own beloved Sue.

"The letters will come to that address," said the agent, pulling
out his commission from the postmaster-general, and exhibiting it
to the pair.

Taking in the purport of it at a glance, Morris jumped several
inches into the air, slapped his sides, and exclaimed, "A
deetecter, arter all; sold, by jingo!"

"We're bust'd then," chimed in Sue, with a melancholy grin.

It was even so.  The letters for Highfalutin & Co. went to
Washington, and Morris went out of the post-office; but the fact
that Sue was overmatched hurt him more than the loss of the place.


June 8, 1872, a law was approved making it a penal offense to use
the mails for the purpose of defrauding others, whether residing
within or outside of the United States.  The postmaster-general was
also authorized to forbid the payment of postal money orders to
persons engaged in fraudulent lotteries, gift enterprises, and
other schemes for swindling the public, and to instruct postmasters
to return to the writers, with the word "fraudulent" written or
stamped on the outside, all registered letters directed to such
persons or firms.  Prior to the enactment of this law, the most
wholesale and barefaced operations were conducted by professional
cheats, mainly through the facilities afforded by the mails, with
almost absolute impunity.  Letters addressed to bogus firms were
indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to the department as
"fictitious" and "undeliverable," and many colluding postmasters
were decapitated.  Such petty measures of warfare served merely to
annoy the vampires and to whet their diabolical ingenuity for the
contrivance of new devices.  Since the law of 1872 went into
effect, however, the scoundrels have been compelled to travel a
thorny road.  Scores of arrests have been made, and in many cases
the criminals have been sentenced to the penitentiary.

It would exceed our limits even to enumerate the devices which have
been tried by different swindlers with greater or less success.
Gift enterprises of various kinds are the most common and
notorious, constituting a distinct branch of the business; but the
pretenses on which human credulity is invited to part with actual
cash for imaginary benefits are innumerable.  A few specimens are
given as illustrations.



AN OLD GAME REVIVED


On the 18th of September, 1875, a fellow was arrested in West
Virginia who sent the victims whom he proposed to bleed letters
whereof the following is a copy:--


"A lady who boarded with me died on last Saturday of apoplexy.  She
left a trunk containing the following property:  One very fine
ladies' gold watch and chain, one ladies' gold necklace, six
ladies' finger rings, earrings, and a great deal of ladies'
clothing.  Among other things was a letter addressed to you.  I
suppose you to be a relative of the deceased, and want to send you
the trunk.  When Miss Thompson died she left a board bill unpaid
amounting to $20.50.  You will please send this amount by return
mail, and the trunk will be forwarded to you immediately."


Instead of remitting the money as modestly requested, the recipient
of one of these choice douceurs, a lady residing in the interior of
Pennsylvania, sent the letter to the mayor of the town where it was
dated and postmarked, who in turn handed it over to special agent
T. P. Shallcross; and he in the course of a day or two succeeded in
capturing the miscreant.

This particular form of the confidence game is very old; yet in the
year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-five a swindler by
means of it succeeds not only in maintaining himself in dashing
style, but also in sporting a flashy traveling companion of the
female persuasion!

Where the letters are addressed to men, the articles reported to be
found in the imaginary trunk are changed to correspond to masculine
habits and wants.  The operators receive many singular and some
entertaining replies.  The following, dated long ago from a small
town at the South, may serve as a sample, the orthography of the
original being preserved:--


"COL. SNOWDEN,

"Dear Sir,--Yours received, and you say John is dead.  Poor fellow!
I always expected it.  Death runs in the family.  Dyed suddenly of
appleplexy--eat too many apples.  Well, I always thought John would
hurt himself eating apples.  I s'pose you had him buried.  You said
nothing about funeral expenses.  He had a trunk--gold watch in it,
&c.  Well, well, what an unexpected legacy! but strange things
happen sometimes.  Never thought I should get a gold watch so.  And
he had the watch in his trunk, did he?  Poor fellow! was always so
particular 'bout his watch and fixings.  Had two revolvers.  What
is them?  I never heard John say anything about them.  Well, you
have been so kind as to write to me; just keep all the balance of
the things, you can have them; but the gold watch, send that to me
by express.  Send immediately if not sooner."

"Very truly,

"GEO. STREAM.

"P. S.  My mother in law says, if you come this way, call.  She
likes to know all such good, kind folks."


It is safe to conclude that "Col. Snowden" never accepted the
invitation to call from the hospitable mother-in-law.



A FORMIDABLE WEAPON


In the summer and fall of 1875 circulars were scattered broadcast
over the country, and advertisements appeared in the weekly
editions of several leading papers of New York City and other large
towns, setting forth the rare merits of a weapon of destruction
called "Allan's New Low-Priced Seven-Shooter."  As a specimen of
ingenious description, the more salient parts of the circular are
herewith reproduced:--


"In introducing this triumph of mechanical genius to the American
public, it is proper to say that it is not an entirely new article,
but that it has lately been improved in appearance, simplicity of
construction, and accuracy, having new points of excellence, making
it superior in many respects to those first made.  The
manufacturers having improved facilities for making them cheaply
and rapidly, have reduced the price to one dollar and fifty cents;
and while the profits on a single one are necessarily small, this
price places them within the reach of all.

"We wish it distinctly understood that this is no cheap, good-for-
nothing 'pop-gun'; and while none can expect it to be 'silver-
mounted' for $1.50, they have a right to expect the worth of their
money, and in this new improved seven-shooter a want is supplied.

"Great care is taken in the adjustment of EACH, so that ALL are
equally good and reliable.  In their production no trouble or
expense has been spared.  An elaborate and complete set of
machinery and gauges has been made, by means of which all the parts
are produced exactly alike, thus insuring great uniformity in the
character of the work produced."


This remarkable implement, equally useful for peace or war, is
offered to an eager public at the low price of $1.50 each, or $13
per dozen.  On the score of cheapness, the inventor greatly prefers
the mails to the express as a vehicle for the transport of his
wares.  In fact, he declines to patronize the express companies at
all, unless a prepayment of twenty-five per cent, accompanies each
order as a guaranty of the "purchaser's good faith."

At first the enterprise succeeded even beyond the most sanguine
expectations of its projector, letters with the cash inclosed
pouring in by the hundred.  For several months, however, after the
first publication of the advertisement, "this triumph of mechanical
genius," though "not an entirely new article," existed only in the
comprehensive brain of the gentleman who had the greatness to
discern in the imperfect work of predecessors the germs of ideal
perfection.  Having no seven-shooters to send, he was compelled to
dishonor the requisitions of the expectant "traveler, sailor,
hunter, fisherman, etc."  While careful to lay aside the
inclosures, he entirely forgot even to so far remember his patrons
as to make a record of their names.

In due time, however, the "factory" went into operation, and the
seven-shooters were actually produced.  The mechanical "triumph,"
rudely made of a cheap metal composition, is a duplicate of a toy
long used by boys to the delight of each other, and to the
annoyance of their elders.  The propulsive power resides in a steel
spring, which has force enough to send a bird-shot across a good-
sized room.  The outfit would cost perhaps six or eight cents to
the manufacturer.  A portion of the orders were now filled, the
greater part being still thrown unhonored into the waste-basket as
before.

Curses both loud and deep began to be showered on the head of the
swindler.  Complaints having reached the department, special agent
C. E. Henry started to hunt for "Wilcox & Co.," of Windsor, Ohio,
for such was the direction in the advertisements and on the
circular.  Proceeding several miles from the nearest railroad, he
found the rural settlement where the factory was supposed to be
located.

Guided by various inquiries, he finally drove up to the small farm-
house where the parents of Wilcox & Co. resided.  On entering, the
officer said, "I am in search of Mr. Wilcox, of the firm of Wilcox
& Co."

"I am your man," remarked a youth, perhaps twenty-two years of age,
whose countenance at once suggested acuteness and cunning.  "What
will you have?"

"I would like to take a look about the arsenal and gun-factory
located here," replied the detective, leisurely surveying the
landscape.

"The works are in Cleveland," answered the great inventor.  "You
can see them by calling there."

"But where is the arsenal?  I understand it was situated here."

"Your information is correct," replied the young man.  "That is it,
across the road."

Casting his eye in the direction indicated, the officer saw a
rickety woodshed about seven feet by nine in size.

Observing the smile of amused incredulity that played upon the
features of his questioner, Wilcox reiterated, with an air of half
offended dignity,--

"That's it.  We keep our seven-shooters there.  But look here;
before this thing goes any further, I want to know who you are."

"Oh, certainly, sir," answered the stranger.  "You will find
nothing about me that I care to keep concealed.  I am a special
agent of the post-office department, and my business here is to
arrest you."

"Why, what have I done to warrant such a visit?" queried youthful
innocence.

"I shall be happy to make that point clear to you," replied the
detective, "though I am afraid the enlightenment will come too late
to prove of much service to you.  In using the mails for the
purpose of swindling, you have violated the laws of the country,
and must suffer the penalty."

"But where does the swindling come in?" expostulated Wilcox.  "I
advertised a seven-shooter.  I didn't say anything about a
revolver.  It will shoot seven shot, or twice that number, if you
only put them in.  If anybody is green enough to suppose I meant a
revolver, that's his lookout, not mine."

"We are not called upon to decide the point," said the special
agent.  "The question is one for the court and the jury.  But you
must go with me to Cleveland.  So get ready."

Finding persuasion, argument, and remonstrance alike useless, the
great mechanical genius packed his satchel in preparation for the
journey.  Once fairly on the road, he became communicative, and
explained the reasons which led him to embark in the enterprise.
"In the first place," said he, "I read Barnum's Life, and accepted
the doctrine that the American people like to be humbugged.  I
planned the shooter myself, and, in wording the circular, aimed to
cover the points and keep within the law.  I think I have
succeeded."

"I beg leave to differ," argued the special agent.  "Aside from the
general falsity of the description, there are specific claims which
you cannot make good."

"I don't see the matter in that light," replied the champion of the
seven-shooter.  "I say, 'Wherever introduced, they advertise
themselves.'  Well, don't they?  Whoever gets one will be apt to
tell his neighbors.  Isn't that advertising itself?  I also say,
'The sale of one opens the market for a dozen in any neighborhood;'
but observe, I don't claim that any more will be sold in that
neighborhood, even if the market is opened.  So far as my guaranty
is concerned, I only warrant them to be as good after three years'
use as when first purchased.  Will you, or will any court, call
that in question?"

"It is charged," said the officer, changing the subject, "that you
neglected to fill a good many orders.  How do you explain that?"

"Why, to furnish the shooter and pay the postage cuts down the
profits terribly," was the unique and characteristic reply.

Orders began to arrive in response to the circular nearly five
months before the first shooter came from the hands of the
manufacturer; and as none of them were ever filled, or even
recorded, it is impossible to estimate how many dupes long watched
the mails in anxious expectancy, and perhaps attributed their
disappointment to dishonesty among the employees of the department.

Of course the papers which printed the advertisement would have
spurned the impostor and exposed the fraud, had they discovered the
facts.  The most scrupulous and careful publishers are often
deceived in the character of advertisements that come through the
regular channels of business, and appear plausible on their face.
In fact, the religious journals are the favorite vehicles of the
swindlers.  The solicitude felt by the newspapers, not only for
their own reputation, but for the interests of their patrons, was
illustrated in the correspondence found on the person of Wilcox.
An influential western journal had addressed him two notes which
ran thus:--


GENTS:  We receive frequent letters from subscribers, saying they
receive no answers to letters they send you containing money for
'7-Shooters.'  How is it?  Are you swindlers?"


Wilcox, though fully able to answer the conundrum, did not see fit
to do so; and hence, on the 3d of November, the same parties
deployed their forces to renew the charge.


"--, Nov. 3, 1875.

"WILCOX & CO.:

"We have written you once before, that our patrons complain to us
that you do not fill their cash orders, and will not answer their
letters of inquiry as to why you don't.  We have received so many
such that we suspect there is something wrong, and, unless you
explain satisfactorily, we will have to expose you."


As the special agent arrived on the same day with the inquiry, the
young man had no opportunity to make the desired explanation.
Indeed it is doubtful if one so modest and reticent on matters of
personal merit, would have answered the question even if permitted
to take all winter to do it in.

The United States commissioner, while fully recognizing the
ingenuity of the circular, differed somewhat from its author in
interpreting its legal construction, and accordingly placed him
under a bond of fifteen hundred dollars to appear for trial.



Andrew Lang


Saint-Germain the Deathless


Among the best brief masterpieces of fiction are Lytton's The
Haunters and the Haunted, and Thackeray's Notch on the Axe in
Roundabout Papers.*  Both deal with a mysterious being who passes
through the ages, rich, powerful, always behind the scenes, coming
no man knows whence, and dying, or pretending to die, obscurely--
you never find authentic evidence of his disease.  In other later
times, at other courts, such an one reappears and runs the same
course of luxury, marvel, and hidden potency.


* Both given in the accompanying volume containing "Old Time
English" Stories.  See also the first story in the "North Europe"
volume.--Editor.


Lytton returned to and elaborated his idea in the Margrave of A
Strange Story, who has no "soul," and prolongs his physical and
intellectual life by means of an elixir.  Margrave is not bad, but
he is inferior to the hero, less elaborately designed, of The
Haunters and the Haunted.  Thackeray's tale is written in a tone of
mock mysticism, but he confesses that he likes his own story, in
which the strange hero through all his many lives or reappearances,
and through all the countless loves on which he fatuously plumes
himself, retains a slight German-Jewish accent.

It appears to me that the historic original of these romantic
characters is no other than the mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain--
not, of course, the contemporary and normal French soldier and
minister, of 1707-1778, who bore the same name.  I have found the
name, with dim allusions, in the unpublished letters and MSS. of
Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and have not always been certain
whether the reference was to the man of action or to the man of
mystery.  On the secret of the latter, the deathless one, I have no
new light to throw, and only speak of him for a single reason.
Aristotle assures us, in his Poetics, that the best-known myths
dramatized on the Athenian stage were known to very few of the
Athenian audience.  It is not impossible that the story of Saint-
Germain, though it seems as familiar as the myth of Oedipus or
Thyestes, may, after all, not be vividly present to the memory of
every reader.  The omniscent Larousse, of the Dictionnaire
Universel, certainly did not know one very accessible fact about
Saint-Germain, nor have I seen it mentioned in other versions of
his legend.  We read, in Larousse, "Saint-Germain is not heard of
in France before 1750, when he established himself in Paris.  No
adventure had called attention to his existence; it was only known
that he had moved about Europe, lived in Italy, Holland, and in
England, and had borne the names of Marquis de Monteferrat, and of
Comte de Bellamye, which he used at Venice."

Lascelles Wraxall, again, in Remarkable Adventures (1863), says:
"Whatever truth there may be in Saint-Germain's travels in England
and the East Indies, it is undubitable that, for from 1745 to 1755,
he was a man of high position in Vienna," while in Paris he does
not appear, according to Wraxall, till 1757, having been brought
from Germany by the Marechal de Belle-Isle, whose "old boots," says
Macallester the spy, Prince Charles freely damned, "because they
were always stuffed with projects."  Now we hear of Saint-Germain,
by that name, as resident, not in Vienna, but in London, at the
very moment when Prince Charles, evading Cumberland, who lay with
his army at Stone, in Staffordshire, marched to Derby.  Horace
Walpole writes to Mann in Florence (December 9, 1745):

"We begin to take up people . . . the other day they seized an odd
man who goes by the name of Count Saint-Germain.  He has been here
these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but
professes that he does not go by his right name.  He sings, plays
on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible.
He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that
married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to
Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman.  The Prince
of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain.
However, nothing has been made out against him; he is released,
and, what convinces me he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks
of his being taken up for a spy."

Here is our earliest authentic note on Saint-Germain; a note
omitted by his French students.  He was in London from 1743 to
1745, under a name not his own, but that which he later bore at the
Court of France.  From the allusion to his jewels (those of a
deserted Mexican bride), it appears that he was already as rich in
these treasures as he was afterwards, when his French acquaintances
marveled at them.  (As to his being "mad," Walpole may refer to
Saint-Germain's way of talking as if he had lived in remote ages,
and known famous people of the past).

Having caught this daylight glimpse of Saint-Germain in Walpole,
having learned that in December, 1745, he was arrested and examined
as a possible Jacobite agent, we naturally expect to find our
contemporary official documents about his examination by the
Government.  Scores of such records exist, containing the questions
put to, and the answers given by, suspected persons.  But we vainly
hunt through the Newcastle MSS., and the State Papers, Domestic, in
the Record Office, for a trace of the examination of Saint-Germain.
I am not aware that he was anywhere left his trail in official
documents; he lives in more or less legendary memoirs, alone.

At what precise date Saint-Germain became an intimate of Louis XV.,
the Duc de Choiseul, Madame de Pompadour, and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, one cannot ascertain.  The writers of memoirs are the
vaguest of mortals about dates; only one discerns that Saint-
Germain was much about the French Court, and high in the favor of
the King, having rooms at Chambord, during the Seven Years' War,
and just before the time of the peace negotiations of 1762-1763.
The art of compiling false or forged memoirs of that period was
widely practiced; but the memoirs of Madame du Hausset, who speaks
of Saint-Germain, are authentic.  She was the widow of a poor man
of noble family, and was one of two femmes de chambre of Madame de
Pompadour.  Her manuscript was written, she explains, by aid of a
brief diary which she kept during her term of service.  One day M.
Senac de Meilhan found Madame de Pompadour's brother, M. de
Marigny, about to burn a packet of papers.  "It is the journal," he
said, "of a femme de chambre of my sister, a good, kind woman."  De
Meilhan asked for the manuscript, which he later gave to Mr.
Crawford, one of the Kilwinning family, in Ayrshire, who later
helped in the escape of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette to
Varennes, where they were captured.  With the journal of Madame du
Hausset were several letters to Marigny on points of historical
anecdote.[1]


[1] One of these gives Madame de Vieux-Maison as the author of a
roman a clef, Secret Memoirs of the Court of Persia, which contains
an early reference to the Man in the Iron Mask (died 1703).  The
letter-writer avers that D'Argenson, the famous minister of Louis
XV., said that the Man in the Iron Mask was really a person fort
peu de chose, 'of very little account,' and that the Regent
d'Orleans was of the same opinion.  This corroborates my theory,
that the Mask was merely the valet of a Huguenot conspirator, Roux
de Marsilly, captured in England, and imprisoned because he was
supposed to know some terrible secret--which he knew nothing about.
See The Valet's Tragedy, Longmans, 1903.


Crawford published the manuscript of Madame du Hausset, which he
was given by de Meilhan, and the memoirs are thus from an authentic
source.  The author says that Louis XV. was always kind to her, but
spoke little to her, whereas Madame de Pompadour remarked, "The
King and I trust you so much that we treat you like a cat or a dog,
and talk freely before you."

As to Saint-Germain, Madame du Hausset writes: "A man who was as
amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour.  This was
the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that
he had lived for several centuries.  One day Madame said to him,
while at her toilet, "What sort of man was Francis I., a king whom
I could have loved?"  "A good sort of fellow," said Saint-Germain;
"too fiery--I could have given him a useful piece of advice, but he
would not have listened."  He then described, in very general
terms, the beauty of Mary Stuart and La Reine Margot.  "You seem to
have seen them all," said Madame de Pompadour, laughing.
"Sometimes," said Saint-Germain, "I amuse myself, not by making
people believe, but by letting them believe, that I have lived from
time immemorial."  "But you do not tell us your age, and you give
yourself out as very old.  Madame de Gergy, who was wife of the
French ambassador at Venice fifty years ago, I think, says that she
knew you there, and that you are not changed in the least."  "It is
true, Madame, that I knew Madame de Gergy long ago."  "But
according to her story you must now be over a century old."  "It
may be so, but I admit that even more possibly the respected lady
is in her dotage."

At this time Saint-Germain, says Madame du Hausset, looked about
fifty, was neither thin nor stout, seemed clever, and dressed
simply, as a rule, but in good taste.  Say that the date was 1760,
Saint-Germain looked fifty; but he had looked the same age,
according to Madame de Gergy, at Venice, fifty years earlier, in
1710.  We see how pleasantly he left Madame de Pompadour in doubt
on that point.

He pretended to have the secret of removing flaws from diamonds.
The King showed him a stone valued at 6,000 francs--without a flaw
it would have been worth 10,000.  Saint-Germain said that he could
remove the flaw in a month, and in a month he brought back the
diamond--flawless.  The King sent it, without any comment, to his
jeweler, who gave 9,600 francs for the stone, but the King returned
the money, and kept the gem as a curiosity.  Probably it was not
the original stone, but another cut in the same fashion, Saint-
Germain sacrificing 3,000 or 4,000 francs to his practical joke.
He also said that he could increase the size of pearls, which he
could have proved very easily--in the same manner.  He would not
oblige Madame de Pompadour by giving the King an elixir of life: "I
should be mad if I gave the King a drug."  There seems to be a
reference to this desire of Madame de Pompadour in an unlikely
place, a letter of Pickle the Spy to Mr. Vaughan (1754)!  This
conversation Madame du Hausset wrote down on the day of its
occurrence.

Both Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour treated Saint-Germain as a
person of consequence.  "He is a quack, for he says he has an
elixir," said Dr. Quesnay, with medical skepticism.  "Moreover, our
master, the King, is obstinate; he sometimes speaks of Saint-
Germain as a person of illustrious birth."

The age was skeptical, unscientific, and, by reaction, credulous.
The philosophes, Hume, Voltaire, and others, were exposing, like an
ingenious American gentleman, "the mistakes of Moses."  The Earl of
Marischal told Hume that life had been chemically produced in a
laboratory, so what becomes of Creation?  Prince Charles, hidden in
a convent, was being tutored by Mlle. Luci in the sensational
philosophy of Locke, "nothing in the intellect which does not come
through the senses"--a queer theme for a man of the sword to study.
But, thirty years earlier, the Regent d'Orleans had made crystal-
gazing fashionable, and stories of ghosts and second-sight in the
highest circles were popular.  Mesmer had not yet appeared, to give
a fresh start to the old savage practice of hypnotism; Cagliostro
was not yet on the scene with his free-masonry of the ancient
Egyptian school.  But people were already in extremes of doubt and
of belief; there might be something in the elixir of life and in
the philosopher's stone; it might be possible to make precious
stones chemically, and Saint-Germain, who seemed to be over a
century old at least, might have all these secrets.

Whence came his wealth in precious stones, people asked, unless
from some mysterious knowledge, or some equally mysterious and
illustrious birth?

He showed Madame de Pompadour a little box full of rubies, topazes,
and diamonds.  Madame de Pompadour called Madame du Hausset to look
at them; she was dazzled, but skeptical, and made a sign to show
that she thought them paste.  The Count then exhibited a superb
ruby, tossing aside contemptuously a cross covered with gems.
"That is not so contemptible," said Madame du Hausset, hanging it
round her neck.  The Count begged her to keep the jewel; she
refused, and Madame de Pompadour backed her refusal.  But Saint-
Germain insisted, and Madame de Pompadour, thinking that the cross
might be worth forty louis, made a sign to Madame du Hausset that
she accept.  She did, and the jewel was valued at 1,500 francs--
which hardly proves that the other large jewels were genuine,
though Von Gleichen believed they were, and thought the Count's
cabinet of old masters very valuable.

The fingers, the watch, the snuffbox, the shoe-buckles, the garter
studs, the solitaires of the Count, on high days, all burned with
diamonds and rubies, which were estimated, one day, at 200,000
francs.  His wealth did not come from cards or swindling--no such
charges are ever hinted at; he did not sell elixirs, nor
prophecies, nor initiations.  His habits do not seem to have been
extravagant.  One might regard him as a clever eccentric person,
the unacknowledged child, perhaps, of some noble, who had put his
capital mainly into precious stones.  But Louis XV. treated him as
a serious personage, and probably knew, or thought he knew, the
secret of his birth.  People held that he was a bastard of a king
of Portugal, says Madame du Hausset.  Perhaps the most ingenious
and plausible theory of the birth of Saint-Germain makes him the
natural son, not of a king of Portugal, but of a queen of Spain.
The evidence is not evidence, but a series of surmises.  Saint-
Germain, on this theory, 'wrop his buth up in a mistry' (like that
of Charles James Fitzjames de la Pluche), out of regard for the
character of his royal mamma.  I believe this about as much as I
believe that a certain Rev. Mr. Douglas, an obstreperous
Covenanting minister, was a descendant of the captive Mary Stuart.
However, Saint-Germain is said, like Kaspar Hauser, to have
murmured of dim memories of his infancy, of diversions on
magnificent terraces, and of palaces glowing beneath an azure sky.
This is reported by Von Gleichen, who knew him very well, but
thought him rather a quack.  Possibly he meant to convey the idea
that he was Moses, and that he had dwelt in the palaces of the
Ramessids.  The grave of the prophet was never known, and Saint-
Germain may have insinuated that he began a new avatar in a cleft
of Mount Pisgah; he was capable of it.

However, a less wild surmise avers that, in 1763, the secrets of
his birth and the source of his opulence were known in Holland.
The authority is the Memoirs of Grosley (1813).  Grosley was an
archaeologist of Troyes; he had traveled in Italy, and written an
account of his travels; he also visited Holland and England, and
later, from a Dutchman, he picked up his information about Saint-
Germain.  Grosley was a Fellow of our Royal Society, and I greatly
revere the authority of a F.R.S.  His later years were occupied in
the compilation of his Memoirs, including an account of what he did
and heard in Holland, and he died in 1785.  According to Grosley's
account of what the Dutchman knew, Saint-Germain was the son of a
princess who fled (obviously from Spain) to Bayonne, and of a
Portuguese Jew dwelling in Bordeaux.

What fairy and fugitive princess can this be, whom not in vain the
ardent Hebrew wooed?  She was, she must have been, as Grosley saw,
the heroine of Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas.  The unhappy Charles II. of
Spain, a kind of "mammet" (as the English called the Richard II.
who appeared up in Islay, having escaped from Pomfret Castle), had
for his first wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favorite sister of
our Charles II.  This childless bride, after some ghostly years of
matrimony, after being exorcised in disgusting circumstances, died
in February, 1689.  In May, 1690 a new bride, Marie de Neuborg, was
brought to the grisly side of the crowned mammet of Spain.  She,
too, failed to prevent the wars of the Spanish Succession by giving
an heir to the Crown of Spain.  Scandalous chronicles aver that
Marie was chosen as Queen of Spain for the levity of her character,
and that the Crown was expected, as in the Pictish monarchy, to
descend on the female side; the father of the prince might be
anybody.  What was needed was simply a son of the QUEEN of Spain.
She had, while Queen, no son, as far as is ascertained, but she had
a favorite, a Count Andanero, whom she made minister of finance.
"He was not a born Count," he was a financier, this favorite of the
Queen of Spain.  That lady did go to live in Bayonne in 1706, six
years after the death of Charles II., her husband.  The hypothesis
is, then, that Saint-Germain was the son of this ex-Queen of Spain,
and of the financial Count, Andanero, a man, "not born in the
sphere of Counts," and easily transformed by tradition into a
Jewish banker of Bordeaux.  The Duc de Choiseul, who disliked the
intimacy of Louis XV. and of the Court with Saint-Germain, said
that the Count was "the son of a Portuguese Jew, WHO DECEIVES THE
COURT.  It is strange that the King is so often allowed to be
almost alone with this man, though, when he goes out, he is
surrounded by guards, as if he feared assassins everywhere."  This
anecdote is from the Memoirs of Gleichen, who had seen a great deal
of the world.  He died in 1807.

It seems a fair inference that the Duc de Choiseul knew what the
Dutch bankers knew, the story of the Count's being a child of a
princess retired to Bayonne--namely, the ex-Queen of Spain--and of
a Portuguese-Hebrew financier.  De Choiseul was ready to accept the
Jewish father, but thought that, in the matter of the royal mother,
Saint-Germain "deceived the Court."

A queen of Spain might have carried off any quantity of the
diamonds of Brazil.  The presents of diamonds from her almost
idiotic lord must have been among the few comforts of her situation
in a Court overridden by etiquette.  The reader of Madame
d'Aulnoy's contemporary account of the Court of Spain knows what a
dreadful dungeon it was.  Again, if born at Bayonne about 1706, the
Count would naturally seem to be about fifty in 1760.  The purity
with which he spoke German, and his familiarity with German
princely Courts--where I do not remember that Barry Lyndon ever met
him--are easily accounted for if he had a royal German to his
mother.  But, alas! if he was the son of a Hebrew financier,
Portuguese or Alsatian (as some said), he was likely, whoever his
mother may have been, to know German, and to be fond of precious
stones.  That Oriental taste notoriously abides in the hearts of
the Chosen People.[1]


[1] Voyage en Angleterre, 1770.


     "Nay, nefer shague your gory locks at me,
      Dou canst not say I did it,"


quotes Pinto, the hero of Thackeray's Notch on the Axe.  "He
pronounced it, by the way, I DIT it, by which I KNOW that Pinto was
a German," says Thackeray.  I make little doubt but that Saint-
Germain, too, was a German, whether by the mother's side, and of
princely blood, or quite the reverse.

Grosley mixes Saint-Germain up with a lady as mysterious as
himself, who also lived in Holland, on wealth of an unknown source,
and Grosley inclines to think that the Count found his way into a
French prison, where he was treated with extraordinary respect.

Von Gleichen, on the other hand, shows the Count making love to a
daughter of Madame Lambert, and lodging in the house of the mother.
Here Von Gleichen met the man of mystery and became rather intimate
with him.  Von Gleichen deemed him very much older than he looked,
but did not believe in his elixir.

In any case, he was not a cardsharper, a swindler, a professional
medium, or a spy.  He passed many evenings almost alone with Louis
XV., who, where men were concerned, liked them to be of good family
(about ladies he was much less exclusive).  The Count had a grand
manner; he treated some great personages in a cavalier way, as if
he were at least their equal.  On the whole, if not really the son
of a princess, he probably persuaded Louis XV. that he did come of
that blue blood, and the King would have every access to authentic
information.  Horace Walpole's reasons for thinking Saint-Germain
"not a gentleman" scarcely seem convincing.

The Duc de Choiseul did not like the fashionable Saint-Germain.  He
thought him a humbug, even when the doings of the deathless one
were perfectly harmless.  As far as is known, his recipe for health
consisted in drinking a horrible mixture called "senna tea"--which
was administered to small boys when I was a small boy--and in not
drinking anything at his meals.  Many people still observe this
regimen, in the interest, it is said, of their figures.  Saint-
Germain used to come to the house of de Choiseul, but one day, when
Von Gleichen was present, the minister lost his temper with his
wife.  He observed that she took no wine at dinner, and told her
that she had learned that habit of abstinence from Saint-Germain;
that HE might do as he pleased, "but you, madame, whose health is
precious to me, I forbid to imitate the regimen of such a dubious
character."  Gleichen, who tells the anecdote, says that he was
present when de Choiseul thus lost his temper with his wife.  The
dislike of de Choiseul had a mournful effect on the career of
Saint-Germain.

In discussing the strange story of the Chevalier d'Eon, one has
seen that Louis XV. amused himself by carrying on a secret scheme
of fantastic diplomacy through subordinate agents, behind the backs
and without the knowledge of his responsible ministers.  The Duc de
Choiseul, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, was excluded, it seems,
from all knowledge of these double intrigues, and the Marechal de
Belle-Isle, Minister of War, was obviously kept in the dark, as was
Madame de Pompadour.  Now it is stated by Von Gleichen that the
Marechal de Belle-Isle, from the War Office, started a NEW secret
diplomacy behind the back of de Choiseul, at the Foreign Office.
The King and Madame de Pompadour (who was not initiated into the
general scheme of the King's secret) were both acquainted with what
de Choiseul was not to know--namely, Belle-Isle's plan for secretly
making peace through the mediation, or management, at all events,
of Holland.  All this must have been prior to the death of the
Marechal de Belle-Isle in 1761; and probably de Broglie, who
managed the regular old secret policy of Louis XV., knew nothing
about this new clandestine adventure; at all events, the late Duc
de Broglie says nothing about it in his book The King's Secret.[1]


[1] The Duc de Broglie, I am privately informed, could find no clue
to the mystery of Saint-Germain.


The story, as given by Von Gleichen, goes on to say that Saint-
Germain offered to conduct the intrigue at the Hague.  As Louis XV.
certainly allowed that maidenly captain of dragoons, d'Eon, to
manage his hidden policy in London, it is not at all improbable
that he really intrusted this fresh cabal in Holland to Saint-
Germain, whom he admitted to great intimacy.  To The Hague went
Saint-Germain, diamonds, rubies, senna tea, and all, and began to
diplomatize with the Dutch.  But the regular French minister at The
Hague, d'Affry, found out what was going on behind his back--found
it out either because he was sharper than other ambassadors, or
because a personage so extraordinary as Saint-Germain was certain
to be very closely watched, or because the Dutch did not take to
the Undying One, and told d'Affry what he was doing.  D'Affry wrote
to de Choiseul.  An immortal but dubious personage, he said, was
treating in the interests of France, for peace, which it was
d'Affry's business to do if the thing was to be done at all.
Choiseul replied in a rage by the same courier.  Saint-Germain, he
said, must be extradited, bound hand and foot, and sent to the
Bastille.  Choiseul thought that he might practice his regimen and
drink his senna tea, to the advantage of public affairs, within
those venerable walls.  Then the angry minister went to the King,
told him what orders he had given, and said that, of course, in a
case of this kind it was superfluous to inquire as to the royal
pleasure.  Louis XV. was caught; so was the Marechal de Belle-Isle.
They blushed and were silent.

It must be remembered that this report of a private incident could
only come to the narrator, Von Gleichen, from de Choiseul, with
whom he professes to have been intimate.  The King and the Marechal
de Belle-Isle would not tell the story of their own discomfiture.
It is not very likely that de Choiseul himself would blab.
However, the anecdote avers that the King and the Minister for War
thought it best to say nothing, and the demand for Saint-Germain's
extradition was presented at The Hague.  But the Dutch were not
fond of giving up political offenders.  They let Saint-Germain have
a hint; he slipped over to London, and a London paper published a
kind of veiled interview with him in June 1760.

His name, we read, when announced after his death, will astonish
the world more than all the marvels of his life.  He has been in
England already (1743-17--?); he is a great unknown.  Nobody can
accuse him of anything dishonest or dishonorable.  When he was here
before we were all mad about music, and so he enchanted us with his
violin.  But Italy knows him as an expert in the plastic arts, and
Germany admires in him a master in chemical science.  In France,
where he was supposed to possess the secret of the transmutation of
metals, the police for two years sought and failed to find any
normal source of his opulence.  A lady of forty-five once swallowed
a whole bottle of his elixir.  Nobody recognized her, for she had
become a girl of sixteen without observing the transformation!

Saint-Germain is said to have remained in London but for a short
period.  Horace Walpole does not speak of him again, which is odd,
but probably the Count did not again go into society.  Our
information, mainly from Von Gleichen, becomes very misty, a thing
of surmises, really worthless.  The Count is credited with a great
part in the palace conspiracies of St. Petersburg; he lived at
Berlin, and, under the name of Tzarogy, at the Court of the
Margrave of Anspach.  Then he went, they say, to Italy, and then
north to the Landgrave Charles of Hesse, who dabbled in alchemy.
Here he is said to have died about 1780-85, leaving his papers to
the Landgrave but all is very vague after he disappeared from Paris
in 1760.  When next I meet Saint-Germain he is again at Paris,
again mysteriously rich, again he rather disappears than dies, he
calls himself Major Fraser, and the date is in the last years of
Louis Philippe.  My authority may be caviled at; it is that of the
late ingenious Mr. Van Damme, who describes Major Fraser in a book
on the characters of the Second Empire.  He does not seem to have
heard of Saint-Germain, whom he does not mention.

Major Fraser, "in spite of his English (sic) name, was decidedly
not English, though he spoke the language."  He was (like Saint-
Germain) "one of the best dressed men of the period. . . .  He
lived alone, and never alluded to his parentage.  He was always
flush of money, though the sources of his income were a mystery to
everyone."  The French police vainly sought to detect the origin of
Saint-Germain's supplies, opening his letters at the post-office.
Major Fraser's knowledge of every civilized country at every period
was marvelous, though he had very few books.  "His memory was
something prodigious. . . .  Strange to say, he used often to hint
that his was no mere book knowledge.  "'Of course, it is perfectly
ridiculous,'" he remarked, with a strange smile, "'but every now
and then I feel as if this did not come to me from reading, but
from personal experience.  At times I become almost convinced that
I lived with Nero, that I knew Dante personally, and so forth.'"[1]
At the major's death not a letter was found giving a clew to his
antecedents, and no money was discovered.  DID he die?  As in the
case of Saint-Germain, no date is given.  The author had an idea
that the major was "an illegitimate son of some exalted person" of
the period of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. of Spain.


[1] An Englishman in Paris, vol. i., pp. 130-133.  London, 1892.


The author does not mention Saint-Germain, and may never have heard
of him.  If his account of Major Fraser is not mere romance, in
that warrior we have the undying friend of Louis XV. and Madame de
Pompadour.  He had drunk at Medmenham with Jack Wilkes; as Riccio
he had sung duets with the fairest of unhappy queens; he had
extracted from Blanche de Bechamel the secret of Goby de Mouchy.
As Pinto, he told much of his secret history to Mr. Thackeray, who
says: "I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of
Roundabout Papers."

Did Saint-Germain really die in a palace of Prince Charles of Hesse
about 1780-85?  Did he, on the other hand, escape from the French
prison where Grosley thought he saw him, during the French
Revolution?  Was he known to Lord Lytton about 1860?  Was he then
Major Fraser?  Is he the mysterious Muscovite adviser of the Dalai
Lama?  Who knows?  He is a will-o'-the-wisp of the memoir-writers
of the eighteenth century.  Whenever you think you have a chance of
finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip;
and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I
should incline to deem him as Betsy Prig thought of Mrs. Harris.



The Man in the Iron Mask


I

THE LEGEND


The Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask is, despite a pleasant
saying of Lord Beaconsfield's, one of the most fascinating in
history.  By a curious coincidence the wildest legend on the
subject, and the correct explanation of the problem, were offered
to the world in the same year, 1801.  According to this form of the
legend, the Man in the Iron Mask was the genuine Louis XIV.,
deprived of his rights in favor of a child of Anne of Austria and
of Mazarin.  Immured in the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of
Cannes (where you are shown his cell, looking north to the sunny
town), he married, and begot a son.  That son was carried to
Corsica, was named de Buona Parte, and was the ancestor of
Napoleon.  The Emperor was thus the legitimate representative of
the House of Bourbon.

This legend was circulated in 1801, and is referred to in a
proclamation of the Royalists of La Vendee.  In the same year,
1801, Roux Fazaillac, a Citoyen and a revolutionary legislator,
published a work in which he asserted that the Man in the Iron Mask
(as known in rumor) was not one man, but a myth, in which the
actual facts concerning at least two men were blended.  It is
certain that Roux Fazaillac was right; or that, if he was wrong,
the Man in the Iron Mask was an obscure valet, of French birth,
residing in England, whose real name was Martin.

Before we enter on the topic of this poor menial's tragic history,
it may be as well to trace the progress of the romantic legend, as
it blossomed after the death of the Man, whose Mask was not of
iron, but of black velvet.  Later we shall show how the legend
struck root and flowered, from the moment when the poor valet,
Martin (by his prison pseudonym "Eustache Dauger"), was immured in
the French fortress of Pignerol, in Piedmont (August, 1669).

The Man, in connection with the Mask, is first known to us from a
kind of notebook kept by du Junca, Lieutenant of the Bastille.  On
September 18, 1698, he records the arrival of the new Governor of
the Bastille, M. de Saint-Mars, bringing with him, from his last
place, the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of Camnes, "an old
prisoner whom he had at Pignerol.  He keeps the prisoner always
masked, his name is not spoken . . . and I have put him alone, in
the third chamber of the Bertaudiere tower, having furnished it
some days before with everything, by order of M. de Saint-Mars.
The prisoner is to be served and cared for by M. de Rosarges," the
officer next in command under Saint-Mars.[1]


[1] Funck-Brentano, Legendes et Archives de la Bastille, pp. 86,
87.  Paris, 1898, p. 277, a facsimile of this entry.


The prisoner's death is entered by du Junca on November 19, 1703.
To that entry we return later.

The existence of this prisoner was known and excited curiosity.  On
October 15, 1711, the Princess Palatine wrote about the case to the
Electress Sophia of Hanover, "A man lived for long years in the
Bastille, masked, and masked he died there.  Two musketeers were by
his side to shoot him if ever he unmasked.  He ate and slept in his
mask.  There must, doubtless, have been some good reason for this,
as otherwise he was very well treated, well lodged, and had
everything given to him that he wanted.  He took the Communion
masked; was very devout, and read perpetually."

On October 22, 1711, the Princess writes that the Mask was an
English nobleman, mixed up in the plot of the Duke of Berwick
against William III.--Fenwick's affair is meant.  He was imprisoned
and masked that the Dutch usurper might never know what had become
of him.[1]


[1] Op. cit. 98, note I.


The legend was now afloat in society.  The sub-commandant of the
Bastille from 1749 to 1787, Chevalier, declared, obviously on the
evidence of tradition, that all the Mask's furniture and clothes
were destroyed at his death, lest they might yield a clew to his
identity.  Louis XV. is said to have told Madame de Pompadour that
the Mask was "the minister of an Italian prince."  Louis XVI. told
Marie Antoinette (according to Madame de Campan) that the Mask was
a Mantuan intriguer, the same person as Louis XV. indicated.
Perhaps he was, it is one of two possible alternatives.  Voltaire,
in the first edition of his "Siecle de Louis XIV.," merely spoke of
a young, handsome, masked prisoner, treated with the highest
respect by Louvois, the Minister of Louis XIV.  At last, in
"Questions sur l'Encyclopedie" (second edition), Voltaire averred
that the Mask was the son of Anne of Austria and Mazarin, an elder
brother of Louis XIV.  Changes were rung on this note: the Mask was
the actual King, Louis XIV. was a bastard.  Others held that he was
James, Duke of Monmouth--or Moliere!  In 1770 Heiss identified him
with Mattioli, the Mantuan intriguer, and especially after the
appearance of the book by Roux Fazaillac, in 1801, that was the
generally accepted opinion.

It MAY be true, in part.  Mattioli MAY have been the prisoner who
died in the Bastille in November 1703, but the legend of the Mask's
prison life undeniably arose out of the adventure of our valet,
Martin or Eustache Dauger.


II

THE VALET'S HISTORY


After reading the arguments of the advocates of Mattioli, I could
not but perceive that, whatever captive died, masked, at the
Bastille in 1703, the valet Dauger was the real source of most of
the legends about the Man in the Iron Mask.  A study of M. Lair's
book "Nicholas Fouquet" (1890) confirmed this opinion.  I therefore
pushed the inquiry into a source neglected by the French
historians, namely, the correspondence of the English ambassadors,
agents, and statesmen for the years 1668, 1669.[1]  One result is
to confirm a wild theory of my own to the effect that the Man in
the Iron Mask (if Dauger were he) may have been as great a mystery
to himself as to historical inquirers.  He may not have known WHAT
he was imprisoned for doing!  More important is the probable
conclusion that the long and mysterious captivity of Eustache
Dauger, and of another perfectly harmless valet and victim, was the
mere automatic result of "red tape" of the old French absolute
monarchy.  These wretches were caught in the toils of the system,
and suffered to no purpose, for no crime.  The two men, at least
Dauger, were apparently mere supernumeraries in the obscure
intrigue of a conspirator known as Roux de Marsilly.


[1] The papers are in the Record Office; for the contents see the
following essay, The Valet's Master.


This truly abominable tragedy of Roux de Marsilly is "another
story," narrated in the following essay.  It must suffice here to
say that, in 1669, while Charles II. was negotiating the famous, or
infamous, secret treaty with Louis XIV.--the treaty of alliance
against Holland, and in favor of the restoration of Roman
Catholicism in England--Roux de Marsilly, a French Huguenot, was
dealing with Arlington and others, in favor of a Protestant league
against France.

When he started from England for Switzerland in February, 1669,
Marsilly left in London a valet called by him "Martin," who had
quitted his service and was living with his own family.  This man
is the "Eustache Dauger" of our mystery.  The name is his prison
pseudonym, as "Lestang" was that of Mattioli.  The French
Government was anxious to lay hands on him, for he had certainly,
as the letters of Marsilly prove, come and gone freely between that
conspirator and his English employers.  How much Dauger knew, what
amount of mischief he could effect, was uncertain.  Much or little,
it was a matter which, strange to say, caused the greatest anxiety
to Louis XIV. and to his Ministers for very many years.  Probably
long before Dauger died (the date is unknown, but it was more than
twenty-five years after Marsilly's execution), his secret, if
secret he possessed, had ceased to be of importance.  But he was
now in the toils of the French red tape, the system of secrecy
which rarely released its victim.  He was guarded, we shall see
with such unheard-of rigor that popular fancy at once took him for
some great, perhaps royal, personage.

Marsilly was publicly tortured to death in Paris on June 22, 1669.
By July 19 his ex-valet, Dauger, had entered on his mysterious term
of captivity.  How the French got possession of him, whether he
yielded to cajolery, or was betrayed by Charles II., is uncertain.
The French ambassador at St. James's, Colbert (brother of the
celebrated Minister), writes thus to M. de Lyonne, in Paris, on
July I, 1669:[1] "Monsieur Joly has spoken to the man Martin"
(Dauger), "and has really persuaded him that, by going to France
and telling all that he knows against Roux, he will play the part
of a lad of honor and a good subject."


[1] Transcripts from Paris MSS., Vol. xxxiii., Record Office.


But Martin, after all, was NOT persuaded!

Martin replied to Joly that he knew nothing at all, and that, once
in France, people would think he was well acquainted with the
traffickings of Roux, "and so he would be kept in prison to make
him divulge what he did not know."  The possible Man in the Iron
Mask did not know his own secret!  But, later in the conversation,
Martin foolishly admitted that he knew a great deal; perhaps he did
this out of mere fatal vanity.  Cross to France, however, he would
not, even when offered a safe-conduct and promise of reward.
Colbert therefore proposes to ask Charles to surrender the valet,
and probably Charles descended to the meanness.  By July 19, at all
events, Louvois, the War Minister of Louis XIV., was bidding Saint-
Mars, at Pignerol in Piedmont, expect from Dunkirk a prisoner of
the very highest importance--a valet!  This valet, now called
"Eustache Dauger," can only have been Marsilly's valet, Martin,
who, by one means or another, had been brought from England to
Dunkirk.  It is hardly conceivable, at least, that when a valet, in
England, is "wanted" by the French police on July 1, for political
reasons, and when by July 19 they have caught a valet of extreme
political importance, the two valets should be two different men.
Martin must be Dauger.

Here, then, by July 19, 1669, we find our unhappy serving man in
the toils.  Why was he to be handled with such mysterious rigor?
It is true that State prisoners of very little account were kept
with great secrecy.  But it cannot well be argued that they were
all treated with the extraordinary precautions which, in the case
of Dauger, were not relaxed for twenty-five or thirty years.  The
King says, according to Louvois, that the safe keeping of Dauger is
"of the last importance to his service."  He must have intercourse
with nobody.  His windows must be where nobody can pass; several
bolted doors must cut him off from the sound of human voices.
Saint-Mars himself, the commandant, must feed the valet daily.
"You must never, under any pretenses listen to what he may wish to
tell you.  You must threaten him with death if he speaks one word
except about his actual needs.  He is only a valet, and does not
need much furniture."[1]


[1] The letters are printed by Roux Fazaillac, Jung, Lair, and
others.


Saint-Mars replied that, in presence of M. de Vauroy, the chief
officer of Dunkirk (who carried Dauger thence to Pignerol), he had
threatened to run Dauger through the body if he ever dared to
speak, even to him, Saint-Mars.  He has mentioned this prisoner, he
says, to no mortal.  People believe that Dauger is a Marshal of
France, so strange and unusual are the precautions taken for his
security.

A Marshal of France!  The legend has begun.  At this time (1669)
Saint-Mars had in charge Fouquet, the great fallen Minister, the
richest and most dangerous subject of Louis XIV.  By-and-by he also
held Lauzun, the adventurous wooer of la Grande Mademoiselle.  But
it was not they, it was the valet, Dauger, who caused "sensation."

On February 20, 1672, Saint-Mars, for the sake of economy, wished
to use Dauger as valet to Lauzun.  This proves that Saint-Mars did
not, after all, see the necessity of secluding Dauger or thought
the King's fears groundless.  In the opinion of Saint-Mars, Dauger
did not want to be released, "would never ask to be set free."
Then why was he so anxiously guarded?  Louvois refused to let
Dauger be put with Lauzun as valet.  In 1675, however, he allowed
Dauger to act as valet to Fouquet, but with Lauzun, said Louvois,
Dauger must have no intercourse.  Fouquet had then another prisoner
valet, La Riviere.  This man had apparently been accused of no
crime.  He was of a melancholy character, and a dropsical habit of
body: Fouquet had amused himself by doctoring him and teaching him
to read.

In the month of December, 1678, Saint-Mars, the commandant of the
prison, brought to Fouquet a sealed letter from Louvois, the seal
unbroken.  His own reply was also to be sealed, and not to be seen
by Saint-Mars.  Louvois wrote that the King wished to know one
thing, before giving Fouquet ampler liberty.  Had his valet,
Eustache Dauger, told his other valet, La Riviere, what he had done
before coming to Pignerol? (de ce a quoi il a ete employe aupravant
que d'etre a Pignerol).  "His Majesty bids me ask you [Fouquet]
this question, and expects that you will answer without considering
anything but the truth, that he may know what measures to take,"
these depending on whether Dauger has, or has not, told La Riviere
the story of his past life.[1]  Moreover, Lauzun was never, said
Louvois, to be allowed to enter Fouquet's room when Dauger was
present.  The humorous point is that, thanks to a hole dug in the
wall between his room and Fouquet's, Lauzun saw Dauger whenever he
pleased.


[1] Lair, Nicholas Foucquet, ii. pp. 463, 464.


From the letter of Louvois to Fouquet, about Dauger (December 23,
1678), it is plain that Louis XIV. had no more pressing anxiety,
nine years after Dauger's arrest, than to conceal what it was that
Dauger had done.  It is apparent that Saint-Mars himself either was
unacquainted with this secret, or was supposed by Louvois and the
King to be unaware of it.  He had been ordered never to allow
Dauger to tell him; he was not allowed to see the letters on the
subject between Lauzun and Fouquet.  We still do not know, and
never shall know, whether Dauger himself knew his own secret, or
whether (as he had anticipated) he was locked up for not divulging
what he did not know.

The answer of Fouquet to Louvois must have satisfied Louis that
Dauger had not imparted his secret to the other valet, La Riviere,
for Fouquet was now allowed a great deal of liberty.  In 1679, he
might see his family, the officers of the garrison, and Lauzun--it
being provided that Lauzun and Dauger should never meet.  In March,
1680, Fouquet died, and henceforth the two valets were most
rigorously guarded; Dauger, because he was supposed to know
something; La Riviere, because Dauger might have imparted the real
or fancied secret to him.  We shall return to these poor serving
men, but here it is necessary to state that, ten months before the
death of their master, Fouquet, an important new captive had been
brought to the prison of Pignerol.

This captive was the other candidate for the honors of the Mask,
Count Mattioli, the secretary of the Duke of Mantua.  He was
kidnaped on Italian soil on May 2, 1679, and hurried to the
mountain fortress of Pignerol, then on French ground.  His offense
was the betraying of the secret negotiations for the cession of the
town and fortress of Casal, by the Duke of Mantua, to Louis XIV.
The disappearance of Mattioli was, of course, known to the world.
The cause of his enlevement, and the place of his captivity,
Pignerol, were matters of newspaper comment at least as early as
1687.  Still earlier, in 1682, the story of Mattioli's arrest and
seclusion in Pignerol had been published in a work named "La
Prudenza Trionfante di Casale."[1]  There was thus no mystery, at
the time, about Mattioli; his crime and punishment were perfectly
well known to students of politics.  He has been regarded as the
mysterious Man in the Iron Mask, but, for years after his arrest,
he was the least mysterious of State prisoners.


[1] Brentano, op. cit., p. 117.


Here, then, is Mattioli in Pignerol in May, 1679.  While Fouquet
then enjoyed relative freedom, while Lauzun schemed escapes or made
insulting love to Mademoiselle Fouquet, Mattioli lived on the bread
and water of affliction.  He was threatened with torture to make
him deliver up some papers compromising Louis XIV.  It was
expressly commanded that he should have nothing beyond the barest
necessaries of life.  He was to be kept dans la dure prison.  In
brief, he was used no better than the meanest of prisoners.  The
awful life of isolation, without employment, without books, without
writing materials, without sight or sound of man save when Saint-
Mars or his lieutenant brought food for the day, drove captives
mad.

In January, 1680, two prisoners, a monk[1] and one Dubreuil, had
become insane.  By February 14, 1680, Mattioli was daily conversing
with God and his angels.  "I believe his brain is turned," says
Saint-Mars.  In March, 1680, as we saw, Fouquet died.  The
prisoners, not counting Lauzun (released soon after), were now
five: (1) Mattioli (mad); (2) Dubreuil (mad); (3) The monk (mad);
(4) Dauger, and (5) La Riviere.  These two, being employed as
valets, kept their wits.  On the death of Fouquet, Louvois wrote to
Saint-Mars about the two valets.  Lauzun must be made to believe
that they had been set at liberty, but, in fact, they must be most
carefully guarded IN A SINGLE CHAMBER.  They were shut up in one of
the dungeons of the "Tour d'en bas."  Dauger had recently done
something as to which Louvois writes: "Let me know how Dauger can
possibly have done what you tell me, and how he got the necessary
drugs, as I cannot suppose that you supplied him with them" (July
10, 1680).[2]


[1] A monk, who MAY have been this monk, appears in the following
essay, p. 34, infra.

[2] Lair, Nicholas Foucquet, ii., pp. 476, 477.


Here, then, by July, 1680, are the two valets locked in one dungeon
of the "Tour d'en bas."  By September Saint-Mars had placed
Mattioli, with the mad monk, in another chamber of the same tower.
He writes: "Mattioli is almost as mad as the monk," who arose from
bed and preached naked.  Mattioli behaved so rudely and violently
that the lieutenant of Saint-Mars had to show him a whip, and
threaten him with a flogging.  This had its effect.  Mattioli, to
make his peace, offered a valuable ring to Blainvilliers.  The ring
was kept to be restored to him, if ever Louis let him go free--a
contingency mentioned more than once in the correspondence.

Apparently Mattioli now sobered down, and probably was given a
separate chamber and a valet; he certainly had a valet at Pignerol
later.  By May 1681, Dauger and La Riviere still occupied their
common chamber in the "Tour d'en bas."  They were regarded by
Louvois as the most important of the five prisoners then at
Pignerol.  They, not Mattioli, were the captives about whose safe
and secret keeping Louis and Louvois were most anxious.  This
appears from a letter of Louvois to Saint-Mars, of May 12, 1681.
The jailer, Saint-Mars, is to be promoted from Pignerol to Exiles.
"Thither," says Louvois, "the king desires to transport such of
your prisoners as he thinks too important to have in other hands
than yours."  These prisoners are "the two in the low chamber of
the tower," the two valets, Dauger and La Riviere.

From a letter of Saint-Mars (June, 1681) we know that Mattioli was
not one of these.  He says: "I shall keep at Exiles two birds
(merles) whom I have here: they are only known as the gentry of the
low room in the tower; Mattioli may stay on here at Pignerol with
the other prisoners" (Dubreuil and the mad monk).  It is at this
point that Le Citoyen Roux (Fazaillac), writing in the Year IX. of
the Republic (1801), loses touch with the secret.[1]  Roux finds,
in the State Papers, the arrival of Eustache Dauger at Pignerol in
1669, but does not know who he is, or what is his quality.  He sees
that the Mask must be either Mattioli, Dauger, the monk, one
Dubreuil, or one Calazio.  But, overlooking or not having access to
the letter of Saint-Mars of June, 1681, Roux holds that the
prisoners taken to Les Exiles were the monk and Mattioli.  One of
these must be the Mask, and Roux votes for Mattioli.  He is wrong.
Mattioli beyond all doubt remained at Pignerol.


[1] Recherches Historiques sur l'Homme au Masque de Fer, Paris.
An. IX.


Mountains of argument have been built on these words, deux merles,
"two jail-birds."  One of the two, we shall see, became the source
of the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask.  "How can a wretched
jail-bird (merle) have been the Mask?" asks M. Topin.  "The rogue's
whole furniture and table-linen were sold for 1l. 19s.  He only got
a new suit of clothes every three years."  All very true; but this
jail-bird and his mate, by the direct statement of Louvois, are
"the prisoners too important to be intrusted to other hands than
yours"--the hands of Saint-Mars--while Mattioli is so unimportant
that he may be left at Pignerol under Villebois.

The truth is, that the offense and the punishment of Mattioli were
well known to European diplomatists and readers of books.  Casal,
moreover, at this time was openly ceded to Louis XIV., and Mattioli
could not have told the world more than it already knew.  But, for
some inscrutable reason, the secret which Dauger knew, or was
suspected of knowing, became more and more a source of anxiety to
Louvois and Louis.  What can he have known?  The charges against
his master, Roux de Marsilly, had been publicly proclaimed.  Twelve
years had passed since the dealings of Arlington with Marsilly.
Yet, Louvois became more and more nervous.

In accordance with commands of his, on March 2, 1682, the two
valets, who had hitherto occupied one chamber at Exiles as at
Pignerol, were cut off from all communication with each other.
Says Saint-Mars, "Since receiving your letter I have warded the
pair as strictly and exactly as I did M. Fouquet and M. Lauzun, who
cannot brag that he sent or received any intelligence.  Night and
day two sentinels watch their tower; and my own windows command a
view of the sentinels.  Nobody speaks to my captives but myself, my
lieutenant, their confessor, and the doctor, who lives eighteen
miles away, and only sees them when I am present."  Years went by;
in January, 1687, one of the two captives died; we really do not
know which with absolute certainty.  However, the intensified
secrecy with which the survivor was now guarded seems more
appropriate to Dauger and M. Funck-Brentano and M. Lair have no
doubt that it was La Riviere who expired.  He was dropsical, that
appears in the official correspondence, and the dead prisoner died
of dropsy.

As for the strange secrecy about Dauger, here is an example.
Saint-Mars, in January, 1687, was appointed to the fortress of the
Isles Sainte-Marguerite, that sun themselves in the bay of Cannes.
On January 20 he asks leave to go to see his little kingdom.  He
must leave Dauger, but has forbidden even his lieutenant to speak
to that prisoner.  This was an increase of precaution since 1682.
He wishes to take the captive to the Isles, but how?  A sedan chair
covered over with oilcloth seems best.  A litter might break down,
litters often did, and some one might then see the passenger.

Now M. Funck-Brentano says, to minimize the importance of Dauger,
"he was shut up like so much luggage in a chair hermetically closed
with oilcloth, carried by eight Piedmontese relays of four."

Luggage is not usually carried in hermetically sealed sedan chairs,
but Saint-Mars has explained why, by surplus of precaution, he did
not use a litter.  The litter might break down and Dauger might be
seen.  A new prison was built specially, at the cost of 5,000
lires, for Dauger at Sainte-Marguerite, with large sunny rooms.  On
May 3, 1687, Saint-Mars had entered on his island realm, Dauger
being nearly killed by twelve days' journey in a closed chair.  He
again excited the utmost curiosity.  On January 8, 1688, Saint-Mars
writes that his prisoner is believed by the world to be either a
son of Oliver Cromwell, or the Duc de Beaufort,[1] who was never
seen again, dead or alive, after a night battle in Crete, on June
25, 1669, just before Dauger was arrested.  Saint-Mars sent in a
note of the TOTAL of Dauger's expenses for the year 1687.  He
actually did not dare to send the ITEMS, he says, lest they, if the
bill fell into the wrong hands, might reveal too much.


[1] Duc de Beaufort whom Athos releases from prison in Dumas's
Vingt Ans Apres.


Meanwhile, an Italian news-letter, copied into a Leyden paper, of
August 1687, declared that Mattioli had just been brought from
Pignerol to Sainte-Marguerite.  There was no mystery about
Mattioli, the story of his capture was published in 1682, but the
press, on one point, was in error; Mattioli was still at Pignerol.
The known advent of the late Commandant of Pignerol, Saint-Mars,
with a single concealed prisoner, at the island, naturally
suggested the erroneous idea that the prisoner was Mattioli.  The
prisoner was really Dauger, the survivor of the two valets.

From 1688 to 1691 no letter about Dauger has been published.
Apparently he was then the only prisoner on the island, except one
Chezut, who was there before Dauger arrived, and gave up his
chamber to Dauger while the new cells were being built.  Between
1689 and 1693 six Protestant preachers were brought to the island,
while Louvois, the Minister, died in 1691, and was succeeded by
Barbezieux.  On August 13, 1691, Barbezieux wrote to ask Saint-Mars
about "the prisoner whom he had guarded for twenty years."  The
only such prisoner was Dauger, who entered Pignerol in August,
1669.  Mattioli had been a prisoner only for twelve years, and lay
in Pignerol, not in Sainte-Marguerite, where Saint-Mars now was.
Saint-Mars replied: "I can assure you that NOBODY HAS SEEN HIM BUT
MYSELF."

By the beginning of March, 1694, Pignerol had been bombarded by the
enemies of France; presently Louis XIV. had to cede it to Savoy.
The prisoners there must be removed.  Mattioli, in Pignerol, at the
end of 1693, had been in trouble.  He and his valet had tried to
smuggle out letters written on the linings of their pockets.  These
were seized and burned.  On March 20, 1694, Barbezieux wrote to
Laprade, now commanding at Pignerol, that he must take his three
prisoners, one by one, with all secrecy, to Sainte-Marguerite.
Laprade alone must give them their food on the journey.  The
military officer of the escort was warned to ask no questions.
Already (February 26, 1694) Barbezieux had informed Saint-Mars that
these prisoners were coming.  They are of more consequence, one of
them at least, than the prisoners on the island, and must be put in
the safest places."  The "one" is doubtless Mattioli.  In 1681
Louvois had thought Dauger and La Riviere more important than
Mattioli, who, in March, 1694, came from Pignerol to Sainte-
Marguerite.  Now in April, 1694, a prisoner died at the island, a
prisoner who, like Mattioli, HAD A VALET.  We hear of no other
prisoner on the island, except Mattioli who had a valet.  A letter
of Saint-Mars (January 6, 1696) proves that no prisoner THEN had a
valet, for each prisoner collected his own dirty plates and dishes,
piled them up, and handed them to the lieutenant.

M. Funck-Brentano argues that in this very letter (January 6, 1696)
Saint-Mars speaks of "les valets de messieurs les prisonniers."
But in THAT part of the letter Saint-Mars is not speaking of the
actual state of things at Sainte-Marguerite, but is giving
reminiscences of Fouquet and Lauzun, who, of course, at Piguerol,
had valets, and had money, as he shows.  Dauger had no money.  M.
Funck-Brentano next argues that early in 1694 one of the preacher
prisoners, Melzac, died, and cites M. Jung ("La Verite sur le
Masque de Fer," p. 91).  This is odd, as M. Jung says that Melzac,
or Malzac, "died in the end of 1692, or early in 1693."  Why, then,
does M. Funck-Brentano cite M. Jung for the death of the preacher
early in 1694, when M. Jung (conjecturally) dates his decease at
least a year earlier?[1]  It is not a mere conjecture as, on March
3, 1693, Barbezieux begs Saint-Mars to mention his Protestant
prisoners under nicknames. There are THREE, and Malzac is no longer
one of them.  Malzac, in 1692, suffered from a horrible disease,
discreditable to one of the godly, and in October, 1692, had been
allowed medical expenses.  Whether they included a valet or not,
Malzac seems to have been non-existent by March, 1693.  Had he
possessed a valet, and had he died in 1694, why should HIS valet
have been "shut up in the vaulted prison"?  This was the fate of
the valet of the prisoner who died in April, 1694, and was probably
Mattioli.


[1] M. Funck-Brentano's statement is in Revue Historique, lvi. p.
298.  "Malzac died at the beginning of 1694," citing Jung, p. 91.
Now on p. 91 M. Jung writes, "At the beginning of 1694 Saint-Mars
had six prisoners, of whom one Melzac, dies."  But M. Jung (pp.
269, 270) later writes, "It is probable that Melzac died at the end
of 1692, or early in 1693," and he gives his reasons, which are
convincing.  M. Funck-Brentano must have overlooked M. Jung's
change of opinion between his p. 91 and his pp. 269, 270.


Mattioli, certainly, had a valet in December, 1693, at Pignerol.
He went to Sainte-Marguerite in March, 1694.  In April, 1694, a
prisoner with a valet died at Sainte-Marguerite.  In January, 1696,
no prisoner at Sainte-Marguerite had a valet.  Therefore, there is
a strong presumption that the "prisonnier au valet" who died in
April, was Mattioli.

After December, 1693, when he was still at Pignerol, the name of
Mattioli, freely used before, never occurs in the correspondence.
But we still often hear of "l'ancien prisonnier," "the old
prisoner."  He was, on the face of it, Dauger, by far the oldest
prisoner.  In 1688, Saint-Mars, having only one prisoner (Dauger),
calls him merely "my prisoner.  In 1691, when Saint-Mars had
several prisoners, Barbezieux styles Dauger "your prisoner of
twenty years' standing."  When, in 1696-1698, Saint-Mars mentions
"mon ancien prisonnier," "my prisoner of long standing," he
obviously means Dauger, not Mattioli--above all, if Mattioli died
in 1694.  M. Funck-Brentano argues that "mon ancien prisonnier" can
only mean "my erstwhile prisoner, he who was lost and is restored
to me"--that is, Mattioli.  This is not the view of M. Jung, or M.
Lair, or M. Loiseleur.

Friends of Mattioli's claims rest much on this letter of Barbezieux
to Saint-Mars (November 17, 1697): "You have only to watch over the
security of all your prisoners, without ever explaining to anyone
what it is that your prisoner of long standing did."  That secret,
it is argued, MUST apply to Mattioli.  But all the world knew what
Mattioli had done!  Nobody knew, and nobody knows, what Eustache
Dauger had done.  It was one of the arcana imperii.  It is the
secret enforced ever since Dauger's arrest in 1669.  Saint-Mars
(1669) was not to ask.  Louis XIV. could only lighten the captivity
of Fouquet (1678) if his valet, La Riviere, did not know what
Dauger had done.  La Riviere (apparently a harmless man) lived and
died in confinement, the sole reason being that he might perhaps
know what Dauger had done.  Consequently there is the strongest
presumption that the "ancien prisonnier" of 1697 is Dauger, and
that "what he had done" (which Saint-Mars must tell to no one) was
what Dauger did, not what Mattioli did.  All Europe knew what
Mattioli had done; his whole story had been published to the world
in 1682 and 1687.

On July 19, 1698, Barbezieux bade Saint-Mars come to assume the
command of the Bastille.  He is to bring his "old prisoner," whom
not a soul is to see.  Saint-Mars therefore brought his man MASKED,
exactly as another prisoner was carried masked from Provence to the
Bastille in 1695.  M. Funck-Brentano argues that Saint-Mars was now
quite fond of his old Mattioli, so noble, so learned.

At last, on September 18, 1698, Saint-Mars lodged his "old
prisoner" in the Bastille, "an old prisoner whom he had at
Pignerol," says the journal of du Junca, Lieutenant of the
Bastille.  His food, we saw, was brought him by Rosarges alone, the
"Major," a gentleman who had always been with Saint-Mars.  Argues
M. Funck-Brentano, all this proves that the captive was a
gentleman, not a valet.  Why?  First, because the Bastille, under
Louis XIV., was "une prison de distinction."  Yet M. Funck-Brentano
tells us that in Mazarin's time "valets mixed up with royal plots"
were kept in the Bastille.  Again, in 1701, in this "noble prison,"
the Mask was turned out of his room to make place for a female
fortune-teller, and was obliged to chum with a profligate valet of
nineteen, and a "beggarly" bad patriot, who "blamed the conduct of
France, and approved that of other nations, especially the Dutch."
M. Funck-Brentano himself publishes these facts (1898), in part
published earlier (1890) by M. Lair.[1]  Not much noblesse here!
Next, if Rosarges, a gentleman, served the Mask, Saint-Mars alone
(1669) carried his food to the valet, Dauger.  So the service of
Rosarges does not ennoble the Mask and differentiate him from
Dauger, who was even more nobly served, by Saint-Mars.


[1] Legendes de la Bastille, pp. 86-89.  Citing du Junca's Journal,
April 30, 1701.


On November 19, 1703, the Mask died suddenly (still in his velvet
mask), and was buried on the 20th.  The parish register of the
church names him "Marchialy" or "Marchioly," one may read it either
way; du Junca, Lieutenant of the Bastille, in his contemporary
journal, calls him "M. de Marchiel."  Now, Saint-Mars often spells
Mattioli, "Marthioly."

This is the one strength of the argument for Mattioli's claims to
the Mask.  M. Lair replies, "Saint-Mars had a mania for burying
prisoners under fancy names," and gives examples.  One is only a
gardener, Francois Eliard (1701), concerning whom it is expressly
said that, as he is a prisoner, his real name is not to be given,
so he is registered as Pierre Maret (others read Navet, "Peter
Turnip").  If Saint-Mars, looking about for a false name for
Dauger's burial register, hit on Marsilly (the name of Dauger's old
master), that MIGHT be miswritten Marchialy.  However it be, the
age of the Mask is certainly falsified; the register gives "about
forty-five years old."  Mattioli would have been sixty-three;
Dauger cannot have been under fifty-three.

There the case stands.  If Mattioli died in April, 1694, he cannot
be the Man in the Iron Mask.  Of Dauger's death we find no record,
unless he was the Man in the Iron Mask, and died, in 1703, in the
Bastille.  He was certainly, in 1669 and 1688, at Pignerol and at
Sainte-Marguerite, the center of the mystery about some great
prisoner, a Marshal of France, the Duc de Beaufort, or a son of
Oliver Cromwell.  Mattioli was not mystery, no secret.  Dauger is
so mysterious that probably the secret of his mystery was unknown
to himself.  By 1701, when obscure wretches were shut up with the
Mask, the secret, whatever its nature, had ceased to be of moment.
The captive was now the mere victim of cruel routine.  But twenty
years earlier, Saint-Mars had said that Dauger "takes things
easily, resigned to the will of God and the King."

To sum up, on July 1, 1669, the valet of the Huguenot intriguer,
Roux de Marsilly, the valet resident in England, known to his
master as "Martin," was "wanted" by the French secret police.  By
July 19, a valet, of the highest political importance, had been
brought to Dunkirk, from England, no doubt.  My hypothesis assumes
that this valet, though now styled "Eustache Dauger," was the
"Martin of Roux de Marsilly.  He was kept with so much mystery at
Pigernol that already the legend began its course; the captive
valet was said to be a Marshal of France!  We then follow Dauger
from Pignerol to Les Exiles, till January, 1687, when one valet out
of a pair, Dauger being one of them, dies.  We presume that Dauger
is the survivor, because the great mystery still is "what he HAS
DONE," whereas the other valet had done nothing, but may have known
Dauger's secret.  Again the other valet had long been dropsical,
and the valet who died in 1687 died of dropsy.

In 1688, Dauger, at Sainte-Marguerite, is again the source and
center of myths; he is taken for a son of Oliver Cromwell, or for
the Duc de Beufort.  In June 1692, one of the Huguenot preachers at
Saint-Marguerite writes on his shirt and pewter plate and throws
them out of the window.[1]  Legend attributes these acts to the Man
in the Iron Mask, and transmutes a pewter into a silver plate.
Now, in 1689-1693, Mattioli was at Pignerol, but Dauger was at
Sainte-Marguerite, and the Huguenot's act is attributed to him.
Thus Dauger, not Mattioli, is the center round which the myths
crystallize: the legends concern him, not Mattioli, whose case is
well known, and gives rise to no legend.  Finally, we have shown
that Mattioli probably died at Sainte-Marguerite in April, 1694.
If so, then nobody but Dauger can be the "old prisoner" whom Saint-
Mars brought, masked, to the Bastille, in September, 1698, and who
died there in November, 1703.  However suppose that Mattioli did
not die in 1694, but was the masked man who died in the Bastille in
1703, then the legend of Dauger came to be attributed to Mattioli:
these two men's fortunes are combined in the one myth.


[1] Saint-Mars au Ministre, June 4, 1692.


The central problem remains unsolved.

What had the valet, Eustache Dauger, done?[1]


[1] One marvels that nobody has recognized, in the mask, James
Stuart (James de la Cloche), eldest of the children of Charles II.
He came to England in 1668, was sent to Rome, and "disappears from
history."  See infra, "The Mystery of James de la Cloche."


III

THE VALET'S MASTER


The secret of the Man in the Iron Mask, or at least of one of the
two persons who have claims to be the Mask, was "What had Eustache
Dauger done?"  To guard this secret the most extraordinary
precautions were taken, as we have shown in the foregoing essay.
And yet, if secret there was, it might have got wind in the
simplest fashion.  In the "Vicomte de Bragelonne," Dumas describes
the tryst of the Secret-hunters with the dying Chief of the Jesuits
at the inn in Fontainebleau.  They come from many quarters, there
is a Baron of Germany and a laird from Scotland, but Aramis takes
the prize.  He knows the secret of the Mask, the most valuable of
all to the intriguers of the Company of Jesus.

Now, despite all the precautions of Louvois and Saint-Mars, despite
sentinels for ever posted under Dauger's windows, despite
arrangements which made it impossible for him to signal to people
on the hillside at Les Exiles, despite the suppression even of the
items in the accounts of his expenses, his secret, if he knew it,
could have been discovered, as we have remarked, by the very man
most apt to make mischievous use of it--by Lauzun.  That brilliant
and reckless adventurer could see Dauger, in prison at Pignerol,
when he pleased, for he had secretly excavated a way into the rooms
of his fellow prisoner, Fouquet, on whom Dauger attended as valet.
Lauzun was released soon after Fouquet's death.  It is unlikely
that he bought his liberty by the knowledge of the secret and there
is nothing to suggest that he used it (if he possessed it) in any
other way.

The natural clew to the supposed secret of Dauger is a study of the
career of his master, Roux de Marsilly.  As official histories say
next to nothing about him, we may set forth what can be gleaned
from the State Papers in our Record Office.  The earliest is a
letter of Roux de Marsilly to Mr. Joseph Williamson, secretary of
Lord Arlington (December, 1668).  Marsilly sends Martin (on our
theory Eustache Dauger) to bring back from Williamson two letters
from his own correspondent in Paris.  He also requests Williamson
to procure for him from Arlington a letter of protection, as he is
threatened with arrest for some debt in which he is not really
concerned.  Martin will explain.  The next paper is indorsed
"Received December 28, 1668, Mons. de Marsilly."  As it is dated
December 27, Marsilly must have been in England.  The contents of
this piece deserve attention, because they show the terms on which
Marsilly and Arlington were, or, at least, how Marsilly conceived
them.

(1) Marsilly reports, on the authority of his friends at Stockholm,
that the King of Sweden intends, first to intercede with Louis XIV.
in favor of the French Huguenots, and next, if diplomacy fails, to
join in arms with the other Protestant Powers of Europe.

(2) His correspondent in Holland learns that if the King of England
invites the States to any "holy resolution," they will heartily
lend forces.  No leader so good as the English King--Charles II.!
Marsilly had shown ARLINGTON'S LETTER to a Dutch friend, who bade
him approach the Dutch ambassador in England.  He has dined with
that diplomatist.  Arlington had, then, gone so far as to write an
encouraging letter.  The Dutch ambassador had just told Marsilly
that he had received the same news, namely, that, Holland would aid
the Huguenots, persecuted by Louis XIV.

(3) Letters from Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphine say that the
situation there is unaltered.

(4) The Canton of Zurich write that they will keep their promises
and that Berne is anxious to please the King of Great Britain, and
that it is ready to raise, with Zurich, 15,000 men.  They are not
afraid of France.

(5) Zurich fears that, if Charles is not represented at the next
Diet, Bale and Saint Gall will be intimidated, and not dare to join
the Triple Alliance of Spain, Holland, and England.  The best plan
will be for Marsilly to represent England at the Diet of January
25, 1669, accompanied by the Swiss General Balthazar.  This will
encourage friends "to give His Britannic Majesty the satisfaction
which he desires, and will produce a close union between Holland,
Sweden, the Cantons, and other Protestant States."

This reads as if Charles had already expressed some "desire."

(6) Geneva grumbles at a reply of Charles "through a bishop who is
their enemy," the Bishop of London, "a persecutor of our religion,"
that is, of Presbyterianism.  However, nothing will dismay the
Genevans, "si S. M. B. ne change."

Then comes a blank in the paper.  There follows a copy of a letter
as if from Charles II. himself, to "the Right High and Noble
Seigneurs of Zurich."  He has heard of their wishes from Roux de
Marsilly, whom he commissions to wait upon them.  "I would not have
written by my Bishop of London had I been better informed, but
would myself have replied to your obliging letter, and would have
assured you, as I do now, that I desire. . . ."

It appears as if this were a draft of a kind of letter which
Marsilly wanted Charles to write to Zurich, and there is a similar
draft of a letter for Arlington to follow, if he and Charles wish
to send Marsilly to the Swiss Diet.  The Dutch ambassador, with
whom Marsilly dined on December 26, the Constable of Castille, and
other grandees, are all of opinion that he should visit the
Protestant Swiss, as from the King of England.  The scheme is for
an alliance of England, Holland, Spain, and the Protestant Cantons,
against France and Savoy.

Another letter of Marsilly to Arlington, only dated Jeudi, avers
that he can never repay Arlington for his extreme kindness and
liberality.  "No man in England is more devoted to you than I am,
and shall be all my life."[1]


[1] State Papers, France, vol. 125, 106.


On the very day when Marsilly drafted for Charles his own
commission to treat with Zurich for a Protestant alliance against
France, Charles himself wrote to his sister, Madame (Henriette
d'Orleans).  He spoke of his secret treaty with France.  "You know
how much secrecy is necessary for the carrying on of the business,
and I assure you that nobody does, nor shall, know anything of it
here, but myself and that one person more, till it be fit to be
public."[1]  (Is "that one person" de la Cloche?)


[1] Madame, by Julia Cartwright, p. 275.


Thus Marsilly thought Charles almost engaged for the Protestant
League, while Charles was secretly allying himself with France
against Holland.  Arlington was probably no less deceived by
Charles than Marsilly was.

The Bishop of London's share in the dealing with Zurich is obscure.

It appears certain that Arlington was not consciously deceiving
Marsilly.  Madame wrote, on February 12, as to Arlington, "The
man's attachment to the Dutch and his inclination towards Spain are
too well known."[1]  Not till April 25, 1669, does Charles tell his
sister that Arlington has an inkling of his secret dealings with
France; how he knows, Charles cannot tell.[2]  It is impossible for
us to ascertain how far Charles himself deluded Marsilly, who went
to the Continent early in spring, 1669.  Before May 15-25, 1669, in
fact on April 14, Marsilly had been kidnaped by agents of Louis
XIV., and his doom was dight.  Here is the account of the matter,
written to ---- by Perwich in Paris:


[1] Ibid., p. 281.

[2] Ibid., p. 285.


"W. Perwich to ----

"Paris, May 25, '69.

"Honored Sir,

"The Cantons of Switzerland are much troubled at the French King's
having sent fifteen horsemen into Switzerland from whence the Sr de
Manille, the King's resident there, had given information of the Sr
Roux de Marsilly's being there negotiating the bringing the Cantons
into the Triple League by discourses much to the disadvantage of
France, giving them very ill impressions of the French King's
Government, who was betrayed by a monk that kept him company and
intercepted by the said horsemen brought into France and is
expected at the Bastille.  I believe you know the man. . . . I
remember him in England."


Can this monk be the monk who went mad in prison at Pignerol,
sharing the cell of Mattioli?  Did he, too, suffer for his
connection with the secret?  We do not know, but the position of
Charles was awkward.  Marsilly, dealing with the Swiss, had come
straight from England, where he was lie with Charles's minister,
Arlington, and with the Dutch and Spanish ambassadors.  The King
refers to the matter in a letter to his sister of May 24, 1669
(misdated by Miss Cartwright, May 24, 1668.)[1]


[1] Madame, by Julia Cartwright, p. 264.


"You have, I hope, received full satisfaction by the last post in
the matter of Marsillac [Marsilly], for my Ld. Arlington has sent
to Mr. Montague [English ambassador at Paris] his history all the
time he was here, by which you will see how little credit he had
here, and that particularly my Lord Arlington was not in his good
graces, because he did not receive that satisfaction, in his
negotiation, he expected, and that was only in relation to the
Swissers, and so I think I have said enough of this matter."

Charles took it easily!


On May 15/25 Montague acknowledged Arlington's letter to which
Charles refers; he has been approached, as to Marsilly, by the
Spanish resident, "but I could not tell how to do anything in the
business, never having heard of the man, or that he was employed by
my Master [Charles] in any business.  I have sent you also a copy
of a letter which an Englishman writ to me that I do not know, in
behalf of Roux de Marsilly, but that does not come by the post,"
being too secret.[1]


[1] State Papers, France, vol. 126.


France had been well-informed about Marsilly while he was in
England.  He then had a secretary, two lackeys, and a valet de
chambre, and was frequently in conference with Arlington and the
Spanish ambassador to the English Court.  Colbert, the French
ambassador in London, had written all this to the French
Government, on April 25, before he heard of Marsilly's arrest.[1]


[1] Bibl. Nat., Fonds. Francais, No. 10665.


The belief that Marsilly was an agent of Charles appears to have
been general, and, if accepted by Louis XIV., would interfere with
Charles's private negotiations for the Secret Treaty with France.
On May 18 Prince d'Aremberg had written on the subject to the
Spanish ambassador in Paris.  Marsilly, he says, was arrested in
Switzerland, on his way to Berne, with a monk who was also seized,
and, a curious fact, Marsilly's valet was killed in the struggle.
This valet, of course, was not Dauger, whom Marsilly had left in
England.  Marsilly "doit avoir demande la protection du Roy de la
Grande Bretagne en faveur des Religionaires (Huguenots) de France,
et passer en Suisse avec quelque commission de sa part."
D'Aremberg begs the Spanish ambassador to communicate all this to
Montague, the English ambassador at Paris, but Montague probably,
like Perwich, knew nothing of the business any more than he knew of
Charles's secret dealings with Louis through Madame.[1]


[1] State Papers, France. vol. 126.


To d'Aremberg's letter is pinned an unsigned English note,
obviously intended for Arlington's reading.


"Roux de Marsilly is still in the Bastille though they have a mind
to hang him, yet they are much puzzled what to do with him.  De
Lionne has beene to examine him twice or thrice, but there is noe
witnes to prove anything against him.  I was told by one that the
French king told it to, that in his papers they find great mention
of the Duke of Bucks: and your name, and speak as if he were much
trusted by you.  I have enquired what this Marsilly is, and I find
by one Mr. Marsilly that I am acquainted withall, and a man of
quality, that this man's name is onely Roux, and borne at Nismes
and having been formerly a soldier in his troope, ever since has
taken his name to gain more credit in Switserland where hee,
Marsilly, formerly used to bee employed by his Coll: the Mareschall
de Schomberg who invaded Switserland."


We next find a very curious letter, from which it appears that the
French Government inclined to regard Marsilly as, in fact, an agent
of Charles, but thought it wiser to trump up against him a charge
of conspiring against the life of Louis XIV.  On this charge, or
another, he was executed, while the suspicion that he was an agent
of English treachery may have been the real cause of the
determination to destroy him.  The Balthazar with whom Marsilly
left his papers is mentioned with praise by him in his paper for
Arlington, of December 27, 1668.  He is the General who should have
accompanied Marsilly to the Diet.

The substance of the letter (given in full in Note I.) is to the
following effect.  P. du Moulin (Paris, May 19/29 1669) writes to
Arlington.  Ever since, Ruvigny, the late French ambassador, a
Protestant, was in England, the French Government had been anxious
to kidnap Roux de Marsilly.  They hunted him in England, Holland,
Flanders, and Franche-Comte.  As we know from the case of Mattioli,
the Government of Louis XIV. was unscrupulously daring in breaking
the laws of nations, and seizing hostile personages in foreign
territory, as Napoleon did in the affair of the Duc d'Enghien.
When all failed Louis bade Turenne capture Roux de Marsilly
wherever he could find him.  Turenne sent officers and gentlemen
abroad, and, after four months' search they found Marsilly in
Switzerland.  They took him as he came out of the house of his
friend, General Balthazar, and carried him to Gex.  No papers were
found on him, but he asked his captors to send to Balthazar and get
"the commission he had from England," which he probably thought
would give him the security of an official diplomatic position.
Having got this document, Marsilly's captors took it to the French
Ministers.  Nothing could be more embarrassing, if this were true,
to Charles's representative in France, Montague, and to Charles's
secret negotiations, also to Arlington, who had dealt with
Marsilly.  On his part, the captive Marsilly constantly affirmed
that he was the envoy of the King of England.  The common talk of
Paris was that an agent of Charles was in the Bastille, "though at
Court they pretended to know nothing of it."  Louis was overjoyed
at Marsilly's capture, giving out that he was conspiring against
his life.  Monsieur told Montague that he need not beg for the life
of a would-be murderer like Marsilly.  But as to this idea, "they
begin now to mince it at Court," and Ruvigny assured du Moulin
"that they had no such thoughts."  De Lyonne had seen Marsilly and
observed that it was a blunder to seize him.  The French Government
was nervous, and Turenne's secretary had been "pumping" several
ambassadors as to what they thought of Marsilly's capture on
foreign territory.  One ambassador replied with spirit that a
crusade of all Europe against France, as of old against the
Moslems, would be necessary.  Would Charles, du Moulin asked, own
or disown Marsilly?

Montague's position was now awkward.  On May 23, his account of the
case was read, at Whitehall, to the Foreign Committee in London.
(See Note II. for the document.)  He did not dare to interfere in
Marsilly's behalf, because he did not know whether the man was an
agent of Charles or not.  Such are the inconveniences of a secret
royal diplomacy carried on behind the backs of Ministers.  Louis
XV. later pursued this method with awkward consequences.[1]  The
French Court, Montague said, was overjoyed at the capture of
Marsilly, and a reward of 100,000 crowns, "I am told very
privately, is set upon his head."  The French ambassador in
England, Colbert, had reported that Charles had sent Marsilly "to
draw the Swisses into the Triple League" against France.  Montague
had tried to reassure Monsieur (Charles's brother-in-law), but was
himself entirely perplexed.  As Monsieur's wife, Charles's sister,
was working with Charles for the secret treaty with Louis, the
State and family politics were clearly in a knot.  Meanwhile, the
Spanish ambassador kept pressing Montague to interfere in favor of
Marsilly.  After Montague's puzzled note had been read to the
English Foreign Committee on May 23, Arlington offered
explanations.  Marsilly came to England, he said, when Charles was
entering into negotiations for peace with Holland, and when France
seemed likely to oppose the peace.  No proposition was made to him
or by him.  Peace being made, Marsilly was given money to take him
out of the country.  He wanted the King to renew his alliance with
the Swiss cantons, but was told that the cantons must first expel
the regicides of Charles I.  He undertook to arrange this, and some
eight months later came back to England.  "He was coldly used, and
I was complained of for not using so important a man well enough."


[1] Cf. Le Secret du Roi, by the Duc de Broglie.


As we saw, Marsilly expressed the most effusive gratitude to
Arlington, which does not suggest cold usage.  Arlington told the
complainers that Marsilly was "another man's spy," what man's,
Dutch, Spanish, or even French, he does not explain.  So Charles
gave Marsilly money to go away.  He was never trusted with anything
but the expulsion of the regicides from Switzerland.  Arlington was
ordered by Charles to write a letter thanking Balthazar for his
good offices.

These explanations by Arlington do not tally with Marsilly's
communications to him, as cited at the beginning of this inquiry.
Nothing is said in these about getting the regicides of Charles I.
out of Switzerland: the paper is entirely concerned with bringing
the Protestant Cantons into anti-French League with England,
Holland, Spain, and even Sweden.  On the other hand, Arlington's
acknowledged letter to Balthazar, carried by Marsilly, may be the
"commission" of which Marsilly boasted.  In any case, on June 2,
Charles gave Colbert, the French ambassador, an audience, turning
even the Duke of York out of the room.  He then repeated to Colbert
the explanations of Arlington, already cited, and Arlington, in a
separate interview, corroborated Charles.  So Colbert wrote to
Louis (June 3, 1669); but to de Lyonne, on the same day, "I trust
that you will extract from Marsilly much matter for the King's
service.  It seemed to me that milord d'Arlington was uneasy about
it [en avait de l'inquitetude]. . . .  There is here in England one
Martin" (Eustace Dauger), "who has been that wretch's valet, and
who left him discontent."  Colbert then proposes to examine Martin,
who may know a good deal, and to send him into France.  On June 10,
Colbert writes to Louis that he expects to see Martin.[1]


[1] Bibl. Nat., Fonds. Francais, No. 10665.


On June 24, Colbert wrote to Louis about a conversation with
Charles.  It is plain that proofs of a murder-plot by Marsilly were
scanty or non-existent, though Colbert averred that Marsilly had
discussed the matter with the Spanish Ministers.  "Charles knew
that he had had much conference with Isola, the Spanish
ambassador."  Meanwhile, up to July 1, Colbert was trying to
persuade Marsilly's valet to go to France, which he declined to do,
as we have seen.  However, the luckless lad, by nods and by veiled
words, indicated that he knew a great deal.  But not by promise of
security and reward could the valet be induced to return to France.
"I might ask the King to give up Martin, the valet of Marsilly, to
me," Colbert concludes, and, by hook or by crook, he secured the
person of the wretched man, as we have seen.  In a postcript,
Colbert says that he has heard of the execution of Marsilly.

By July 19, as we saw in the previous essay, Louvois was bidding
Saint-Mars expect, at Pignerol from Dunkirk, a prisoner of the
highest political importance, to be guarded with the utmost
secrecy, yet a valet.  That valet must be Martin, now called
Eustache Dauger, and his secret can only be connected with
Marsilly.  It may have been something about Arlington's
negotiations through Marsilly, as compromising Charles II.
Arlington's explanations to the Foreign Committee were certainly
incomplete and disingenuous.  He, if not Charles, was more deeply
engaged with Marsilly than he ventured to report.  But Marsilly
himself avowed that he did not know why he was to be executed.

Executed he was, in circumstances truly hideous.  Perwich, June 5,
wrote to an unnamed correspondent in England: "They have all his
papers, which speak much of the Triple Alliance, but I know not
whether they can lawfully hang him for this, having been
naturalized in Holland, and taken in a privileged country"
(Switzerland).  Montague (Paris, June 22, 1669) writes to Arlington
that Marsilly is to die, so it has been decided, for "a rape which
he formerly committed at Nismes," and after the execution, on June
26, declares that, when broken on the wheel, Marsilly "still
persisted that he was guilty of nothing, nor did know why he was
put to death."

Like Eustache Dauger, Marsilly professed that he did not know his
own secret.  The charge of a rape, long ago, at Nismes, was
obviously trumped up to cover the real reason for the extraordinary
vindictiveness with which he was pursued, illegally taken, and
barbarously slain.  Mere Protestant restlessness on his part is
hardly an explanation.  There was clearly no evidence for the
charge of a plot to murder Louis XIV., in which Colbert, in
England, seems to have believed.  Even if the French Government
believed that he was at once an agent of Charles II., and at the
same time a would-be assassin of Louis XIV., that hardly accounts
for the intense secrecy with which his valet, Eustache Dauger, was
always surrounded.  Did Marsilly know of the Secret Treaty, and was
it from him that Arlington got his first inkling of the royal plot?
If so, Marsilly would probably have exposed the mystery in
Protestant interests.  We are entirely baffled.

In any case, Francis Vernon, writing from Paris to Williamson (?)
(June 19/25, 1669), gave a terrible account of Marsilly's death.
(For the letter, see Note V.) With a broken piece of glass (as we
learn from another source), Marsilly, in prison, wounded himself in
a ghastly manner, probably hoping to die by loss of blood.  They
seared him with a red-hot iron, and hurried on his execution.  He
was broken on the wheel, and was two hours in dying (June 22).
Contrary to usage, a Protestant preacher was brought to attend him
on the scaffold.  He came most reluctantly, expecting insult, but
not a taunt was uttered by the fanatic populace.  "He came up the
scaffold, great silence all about," Marsilly lay naked, stretched
on a St. Andrew's cross.  He had seemed half dead, his head hanging
limp, "like a drooping calf."  To greet the minister of his own
faith, he raised himself, to the surprise of all, and spoke out
loud and clear.  He utterly denied all share in a scheme to murder
Louis.  The rest may be read in the original letter (p. 51).

So perished Roux de Marsilly; the history of the master throws no
light on the secret of the servant.  That secret, for many years,
caused the keenest anxiety to Louis XIV. and Louvois.  Saint-Mars
himself must not pry into it.  Yet what could Dauger know?  That
there had been a conspiracy against the King's life?  But that was
the public talk of Paris.  If Dauger had guilty knowledge, his life
might have paid for it; why keep him a secret prisoner?  Did he
know that Charles II. had been guilty of double dealing in 1668-
1669?  Probably Charles had made some overtures to the Swiss, as a
blind to his private dealings with Louis XIV., but, even so, how
could the fact haunt Louis XIV. like a ghost?  We leave the mystery
much darker than we found it, but we see good reason why
diplomatists should have murmured of a crusade against the cruel
and brigand Government which sent soldiers to kidnap, in
neighboring states, men who did not know their own crime.

To myself it seems not improbable that the King and Louvois were
but stupidly and cruelly nervous about what Dauger MIGHT know.
Saint-Mars, when he proposed to utilize Dauger as a prison valet,
manifestly did not share the trembling anxieties of Louis XIV. and
his Minister; anxieties which grew more keen as time went on.
However, "a soldier only has his orders," and Saint-Mars executed
his orders with minute precision, taking such unheard-of
precautions that, in legend, the valet blossomed into the rightful
kind of France.



ORIGINAL PAPERS IN THE CASE OF ROUX DE MARSILLY.[1]


[1] State Papers, France, vol. 126.


I.  Letter of Mons. P. du Moulin to Arlington.

Paris, May ye , 1669.

My Lord,

Ever since that Monsieur de Ruvigny was in England last, and upon
the information he gave, this King had a very great desire to seize
if it were possible this Roux de Marsilly, and several persons were
sent to effect it, into England, Holland, Flanders, and Franche
Compte: amongst the rest one La Grange, exempt des Gardes, was a
good while in Holland with fifty of the guards dispersed in
severall places and quarters; But all having miscarried the King
recommended the thing to Monsieur de Turenne who sent some of his
gentlemen and officers under him to find this man out and to
endeavor to bring him alive.  These men after foure months search
found him att last in Switzerland, and having laid waite for him as
he came out from Monsr Baithazar's house (a commander well knowne)
they took him and carryed him to Gex before they could be
intercepted and he rescued.  This was done only by a warrant from
Monsieur de Turenne but as soone as they came into the french
dominions they had full powers and directions from this court for
the bringing of him hither.  Those that tooke him say they found no
papers about him, but that he desired them to write to Monsr
Balthazar to desire him to take care of his papers and to send him
the commission he had from England and a letter being written to
that effect it was signed by the prisoner and instead of sending it
as they had promised, they have brought it hither along with them.
They do all unanimously report that he did constantly affirme that
he was imployed by the King of Great Brittain and did act by his
commission; so that the general discourse here in towne is that one
of the King of England's agents is in the Bastille; though att
Court they pretend to know nothing of it and would have the world
think they are persuaded he had no relacion to his Majesty.  Your
Lordship hath heard by the publique newes how overjoyed this King
was att the bringing of this prisoner, and how farr he expressed
his thanks to the chiefe person employed in it, declaring openly
that this man had long since conspired against his life, and
agreeable to this, Monsieur, fearing that Mylord Ambr. was come to
interpose on the prisoner's behalfe asked him on Friday last att
St. Germains whether that was the cause of his coming, and told him
that he did not think he would speake for a man that attempted to
kill the King.  The same report hath been hitherto in everybody's
mouth but they begin now to mince it att court, and Monsieur de
Ruvigny would have persuaded me yesterday, they had no such
thoughts.  The truth is I am apt to believe they begin now to be
ashamed of it: and I am informed from a very good hand that
Monsieur de Lionee who hath confessed since that he can find no
ground for this pretended attempting to the King's life, and that
upon the whole he was of opinion that this man had much better been
left alone than taken, and did look upon what he had done as the
intemperancy of an ill-settled braine.  And to satisfy your
Lordship that they are nettled here, and are concerned to know what
may be the issue of all this, Monsieur de Turenne's secretary was
on Munday last sent to several foreigne Ministers to pump them and
to learne what their thoughts were concerning this violence
committed in the Dominions of a sovereign and an allye whereupon he
was told by one of them that such proceedings would bring Europe to
the necessity of entering into a Croisade against them, as formerly
against the infidels.  If I durst I would acquaint your Lordship
with the reflexions of all publique ministers here and of other
unconcerned persons in relation to his Majesty's owning or
disowning this man; but not knowing the particulars of his case,
nor the grounds his Maty may go upon, I shall forbeare entering
upon this discourse. . . .

Your Lordships' &c.

P. DU MOULIN.


II. Paper endorsed "Mr. Montague originally in Cypher.  Received
May 19, '69.  Read in foreigne Committee, 23 May.  Roux de
Marsilli."[1]


[1] State Papers, France, vol. 126.


I durst not venture to sollicite in Monsr Roux Marsilly's behalfe
because I doe not know whether the King my Master hath imployed him
or noe; besides he is a man as I have been tolde by many people
here of worth, that has given out that he is resolved to kill the
French king at one time or other, and I think such men are as
dangerous to one king as to another: hee is brought to the Bastille
and I believe may be proceeded against and put to death, in very
few daies.  There is great joy in this Court for his being taken,
and a hundred thousand crownes, I am told very privately, set upon
his head; the French Ambassador in England wacht him, and hee has
given the intelligence here of his being employed by the King, and
sent into Switzerland by my Master to draw the Swisses into the
Triple League.  Hee aggravates the business as much as hee can to
the prejudice of my Master to value his owne service the more, and
they seeme here to wonder that the King my Master should have
imployed or countenanced a man that had so base a design against
the King's Person, I had a great deal of discourse with Monsieur
about it, but I did positively say that he had noe relation to my
knowledge to the King my Master, and if he should have I make a
question or noe whither in this case the King will owne him.
However, my Lord, I had nothing to doe to owne or meddle in a
business that I was so much a stranger to. . . .

This Roux Marsilly is a great creature of the B. d'Isola's, wch
makes them here hate him the more.  The Spanish Resident was very
earnest with mee to have done something in behalfe of Marsilly, but
I positively refused.


III. [A paper endorsed "Roux de Marsilli.  Read in for. Committee,
23d May."][1]


[1] State Papers, France, vol. 126.


Roux de Marsilly came hither when your Majesty had made a union
with Holland for making the Peace betwix the two Crownes and when
it was probable the opposition to the Peace would bee on the side
of France.

Marsilly was heard telling of longe things but noe proposition made
to him or by him.

Presently the Peace was made and Marsilly told more plainly wee had
no use of him.  A little summe of money was given him to returne as
he said whither he was to goe in Switzerland.  Upon which hee
wish

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