Paris, the dream of every youthful vaurien, strongly attracted him. In the meantime he started on his travels once more, and again reached Constantinople, from whence he travelled on to Athens, defraying his expenses by clever thefts. One fine day, however, he found himself in the Grecian capital without funds and once more applied to the Roumanian legation to be repatriated. This request being refused, he drew his revolver, put it to his breast, pulled the trigger and fell down senseless. He was removed to a hospital, and although the ball could not be extracted, he did not die, as the surgeon expected. While he lay there, he attracted much sympathy and received several gracious visits from Queen Olga of Denmark, who was at that time in Athens. Her kindness so touched him the first time she came that he burst into tears. She caused him to be removed to the best room in the hospital, defrayed his expenses, and when he recovered ordered him to appear at the Greek court. Subsequently she provided the means for his journey home where, as before, he remained but a short time.
In July, 1888, his love of adventure again drew him away and eventually he managed to reach Paris, where he established himself in the Latin Quarter. His family agreed to make him a small monthly allowance, provided he should adopt some reputable means of livelihood. But the attempt was half-hearted, and as he soon found himself straitened in his means, he eked them out by thefts committed at the Bon Marché, Louvre and other great department stores. His tricks and fraudulent devices were ingenious and varied and may be passed over. He soon aimed at higher game and began stealing unset precious stones from jewellers’ shops, by which he realised plunder to the value of about 5,000 francs monthly. He hired a beautiful villa in the rue François I, lived in luxury, kept race horses and was well received by members of fashionable society, in whose exclusive homes he was made welcome as the supposed son of a rich father, and where he gambled on an enormous scale, often losing large sums. One fine day, however, fate overtook him and he was arrested for thirty-seven thefts to the aggregate value of 540,000 francs. He was thus dashed from the height of prosperity into an abyss of misfortune, and in 1890, when still barely nineteen years of age, he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. After his release, he was again sent home to Bucharest, where as usual he remained only a short time.
He now visited various countries, including Japan and the United States. In Chicago, where many bankers are of German extraction, he was invited everywhere, partly because his German was so perfect and also because he adopted the title of Duke of Otranti and so made an impression by his imaginary high rank. Rich marriages were proposed to him, but the parents of a beautiful girl whom he desired to make his wife discredited the proofs he offered of his wealth and exalted rank. He continued his thefts and was twice imprisoned during this period of his career. But as we are chiefly concerned with his German experiences, we shall take up his life again at the time of his marriage to a German countess of an ancient Catholic family whom he met travelling in Switzerland. He managed to procure the consent of the girl’s mother, but the rest of the family were averse to the match. The young people were genuinely in love, and this marvellous adventurer never ceased to love his wife and was a tender, though not very faithful husband while they remained together. There were so many difficulties to be overcome and so much to be concealed that the marriage seemed hardly possible. But Manolescu procured his papers from Roumania and the couple were married by the bishop of Geneva, the Roumanian vice-consul being present, though the bridegroom, to add to other complications, belonged to the Greek Church. He travelled a great deal with his wife, and in 1899 visited some of her aristocratic relations at their fine country schloss, where he was warmly received. Later on the young couple settled in a lovely villa on the Lake of Constance, where their only child, a girl, was born.
Of course Manolescu was soon short of money, and he decided to start for Cairo to try to procure for himself a position there as hotel manager. The parting between husband and wife, although they supposed it would only be temporary, was most pathetic. They never lived together again. He never reached his destination, for when out of reach of his wife’s good influence, his thieving proclivities again overmastered him, and at Lucerne, one of his stopping places, he entered the rooms of a married couple staying at his hotel and stole most of the contents of the lady’s jewel case which he found in the first trunk he opened. In the husband’s trunk he also found valuable securities which he appropriated, and with this rich booty he escaped to Zurich. At the Hotel Stephanie there, he robbed the bed-room of an American gentleman, making off with bank-notes and French securities to the amount of 70,000 francs. Shortly after this coup he was arrested at Frankfurt and taken to a police station. A brief description given in his own words of some of his experiences there may be of interest.
“At the prison I was given in charge of the inspector. This man, wishing at once to assert his authority, ordered me in a brutal tone to strip where I stood, on a stone floor in a cold corridor where there was a terrible draught from the open windows. I submitted, knowing this measure to be usual at most prisons, though it does not take place elsewhere in a corridor, but in rooms specially arranged for this purpose; also prisoners are generally allowed to keep on their under-linen and shoes. I, however, had to divest myself of everything except my shoes. My garments were carefully searched one by one. During this time the inspector stood in front of me with an evil smile on his face, swaying himself from side to side. I begged him civilly to allow me to keep on my shirt, whereupon he replied that I was well protected from cold by my shoes. Beside myself with rage, I took them and flung them at his head. He threw himself upon me and tried to strike me with his bunch of keys, but I seized his wrist and twisted it, forcing him to drop them. Two warders now appeared at his call, and he ordered me to put on my clothes. To these irons were to be added, but I resisted, and a fight took place in which I came off the victor. The attempt to put me into irons was given up, and I was moved up into a small but airy cell, where I was securely locked up. Later, however, the chief inspector came to see me; he spoke to me kindly and begged me to behave quietly and he would see that I was not maltreated in any way.”
Manolescu’s attempt at escape, his simulation of madness, and the interviews with his wife, who came to Frankfurt that she might see him, need not be detailed at length. It is enough to say that he was extradited to Switzerland, tried and sentenced to only six months’ hard labour. Having regard to the strictness of the Swiss laws, this was a mild sentence, but Manolescu was not considered by the authorities to be in his right mind.
In September of 1900, after his release, he crossed once more to America, where he carried out a large robbery successfully, and returning to Paris, again lived on the very crest of the wave, frequenting the same fashionable circles and attributing his long absence from France to family affairs. He now assumed the title of Prince Lahovary, and had a neat prince’s coronet printed on his visiting cards. He posed as a bachelor, looked about for a wife, and proposed to a young American widow whom he met at Boulogne, where she was staying with her father and brother. She evinced some inclination to accept him and some of her relatives favoured the “prince’s” suit. At the end of three weeks’ courtship they parted, agreeing to meet later on in Berlin. Lahovary, as we must now call him, returned temporarily to Paris, where he literally wallowed in luxury. The large sums he spent he managed to provide for the time being by play, for he was a most inveterate gambler, although not usually lucky, as he calculated that he had lost altogether 1,800,000 francs at cards during his career. In November he arrived, as agreed, in Berlin, accompanied by a secretary and valet, and made his entry into the proud German capital as “Prince Lahovary,” a great personage by whom all Europe was presently to be dazzled and who was to be the subject of endless talk. He established himself with his suite at the Kaiserhof, still falsely pretending to be unmarried, and continued his courtship of the young widow. But his resources soon melted, and he was forced to undertake a fresh robbery on a large scale, which led to his undoing. On the evening of this theft he left Berlin for Dresden, where he sold some of the jewelry he had stolen to a court jeweller for 12,000 marks, and then returned to Berlin to take a temporary leave of his American friends, explaining to them that important affairs called him to Genoa. The father of the young widow proposed that as he and his son and daughter were shortly to sail for America from that port, they should all meet there, and they arranged a rendezvous for January 10, 1901. Now occurred a dramatic little incident in the life of this strange man worth recording.
On January 1, 1901, he left Berlin and went to the place where his wife lived with her child. He wanted to see them once more before proceeding to Genoa to sail from thence to the new world, although he had fully determined to marry the other woman, if possible, and settle down to a properly regulated life in America. He reached the town on January 2nd, at 9 o’clock in the morning, hired a carriage and drove to a shop to buy toys for his child and presents for his wife. He then drove to the villa where his wife lived and stopped at the gate, which he rang five or six times. No one answered or came to open the gate for him. His wife lived on the ground floor and from the window she could see any one who came without being seen. When she recognised her husband, she would not open the door, having promised her aunt never to resume relations with him. He was not to be gainsaid, however, and continued to pull the bell unceasingly. At last the outer door was unlocked and his wife came out as far as the garden gate, but this she did not open. With a trembling voice she asked him what he desired of her. He could hardly speak from emotion, and held out to her his presents, which she refused, saying she did not know with whose money he had bought them. He implored her to let him in to see their child, but she firmly declined. Then he fell into a passion and threatened to return with a representative of the law to help him claim his paternal rights. To prevent a scandal, she promised to show him the child from the window. At last he agreed to this compromise; she returned to the house and presently appeared at the window with the child in her arms. The little child looked at her father with uncomprehending eyes; he stared at his daughter for several minutes, then turned, hurriedly drove away and never beheld his wife or child again.
On reaching Genoa shortly afterward, he was arrested, as the police authorities in Berlin had discovered his theft, and he was sent back there and detained in the well-known Moabit prison. He was placed in a cell where he remained for nearly a year, until May 30, 1901. The examining magistrate was a humane and just man and the lawyer whom Manolescu retained for his own defence was a celebrated barrister. He had no hesitation in confessing his crimes. As doubts of his sanity existed, the medical reports from the Swiss prison, expressing uncertainty as to his mental state, were examined by the doctor of Moabit. Although the identity of the medical officer was suppressed, Manolescu guessed it by intuition and simulated madness so cleverly that he was sent to the infirmary in connection with Moabit, where he was kept under observation for six weeks. He was then taken back to the prison in December, 1901, armed with a certificate drawn up by specialists, stating him to be completely deranged, though this was doubted by the crown solicitor-general. At last, on May 28, 1902, he was brought before the criminal court, where he had some difficulty in maintaining his pretence of madness. The solicitor-general pressed for a conviction as an impostor, but a verdict of insanity was pronounced; he was acquitted as irresponsible, and transferred to the lunatic asylum at Herzburg.
Fourteen months later he escaped. He attacked and pinioned his warder, took forcible possession of his keys, locked him into his own cell, and then quietly left the institution by climbing over the garden wall. With the help of a lady, a member of the Berlin aristocracy, who was a friend of his, he was able to cross the Prussian frontier and to enter Austrian territory. As the papers, however, were full of his exploits, he was arrested at Innsbruck some time later and taken to Vienna, where he still feigned madness. The Austrian doctors supported the views of their Prussian colleagues, and he was acquitted also by the Viennese court of justice. Following this acquittal, Manolescu was sent to Bucharest, where he went determined to reform and to earn his bread honestly. He could find no employment until a publisher suggested he should write his memoirs in the form of an autobiography, from which this summary of his career has been taken. By this occupation he supported himself for a time. As he could find no other means of making his livelihood, he decided to emigrate to America, where he declared every industrious man could find work. He ends his autobiography with these words: “I do not bear my countrymen any grudge. I only wish that the unfortunate prejudices of the egoistic Roumanian form of civilisation which prevented them from holding out a hand to a repentant sinner may soon be removed. Thus ends the autobiography of George Manolescu, alias Prince Lahovary.”