A few additional stories of swindles akin to the entierro are of much interest.
A French landowner by name Armand Carron, a resident of a small town in the Department of Finistère, received, some time ago, a letter from Ceuta, signed Santiago (or James) Carron. The writer explained that he was a native of Finistère where the Frenchman resided; that he was a namesake and a member of the landowner's family, son of a first cousin of his who had left France many years before and settled in Spain with wife and three sons, of whom he, Santiago Carron, now alone survived. This Santiago, the letter went on, had been placed by his father in the military college at Segovia, had served through all the subaltern grades as an artillery officer, had risen to the rank of brigadier and in that capacity had been sent out in command of the district of the Cinco Villas in Cuba, where he had married the daughter of Don Diego Calderon, a wealthy Havana merchant, and the owner of vast sugar plantations. His wife had brought him a dowry of four million reales (£40,000) and had died leaving him a daughter called after her mother, Juanita, now about 17 years old. This girl, the only object of her father's love and care, had been by him sent to Europe and placed for her education at the convent of the Sacre Cœur at Chamartin near Madrid.
His career in the army had been for many years very fortunate and his wedded life in Cuba exceedingly happy. He had been laden with honours by a grateful Government and received many proofs of his country's trust, but lately the officer in charge of the chest of the military district at Cinco Villas had absconded and run away to New York with a sum of two million reales. As he, the brigadier, was answerable for his subaltern's conduct and was not willing to sacrifice one half of his wife's—now his daughter's—fortune to pay for the defaulter, he had been summoned to Spain and then relegated, or sent as a prisoner on parole to the fortress at Ceuta to take his trial before a court martial, which owing to the dilatoriness of all things in Spain might sit till doomsday.
After thus giving an account of himself and his belongings the brigadier proceeded to explain the reasons which induced him to address himself to his unknown French relative. Having suffered much from long exposure to the heat of a tropical climate he felt old before his time, and his hereditary enemy, the gout, had by several sharp twinges made him aware of the precariousness of his tenure of life. He had only that one daughter in the world, the sole heiress of a considerable patrimony who might at any moment be deprived of her natural protector and for whose final education and introduction into society it was his duty to provide. The girl had great natural gifts, had inherited her mother's Creole beauty, and the accounts of her proficiency, given by the nuns at Chamartin were most flattering to his paternal pride. He was anxious to appoint a guardian to his daughter and he could think of no one fitter in every respect for that charge than his only relative, M. Armand Carron.
He (the brigadier) had lately been diligently looking over his father's papers; had found among them very numerous and interesting family documents—ample evidence that a hearty and loving correspondence had for many years been kept up between his father, Vincent Carron, and the father of M. Armand Carron, also called Armand, and he followed up the narrative with frequent allusions to several incidents occurring in the early youth of the two cousins, with descriptions of localities, common acquaintances and the usual joys and sorrows alternating in their domestic circles. Altogether it was a well contrived, plausible story verging so closely upon probability as to avoid shipwreck upon the rock of truth.
M. Armand Carron of Finistère did not think it right or expedient to cast doubt on the genuineness of the communication. He answered the brigadier's appeal by calling him "My dear cousin," saying he had a perfect recollection of his father's frequent allusions to Vincent Carron, the cousin who had grown up with him in their own home and only left their native town on arriving at man's estate. After heartily congratulating the brigadier on his conspicuous career which reflected so much lustre on their own name, and condoling with him about the momentary cloud that had now—undeservedly he felt sure—settled upon it, he assured his newly found relative of his sympathy and of his readiness to look upon the brigadier's daughter as his own child, to receive her into the bosom of his family and take that care of her which so precious a jewel as she was described to be, must fully deserve.
So the matter was settled. The correspondence between the two newly found relatives continued for six or seven months and became very affectionate and confidential. The brigadier sent the Frenchman his photograph and that of his daughter, both taken in Havana and bearing the name and trade mark of the artist. The one represented a middle-aged officer of high rank in full uniform and with the Grand Cross of San Hermengeldo on his breast, a fine manly countenance with long grey silky moustache; the other exhibiting the arch, pretty countenance of a brunette in her teens, with smooth bands of raven hair on either side of her low forehead and the shade of a moonlit night in her dark eyes; a bright blooming creature with dimples and pouting lips and a look of humour and frolic and sense in every feature. Together with the photographs came a letter of Juanita Carron to the brigadier, her father, from the convent, and bearing the Chamartin postmark, in which the girl congratulated her father on his discovery of his Finistère relative, expressed a firm confidence that her loving father would long be spared to her and concluded that she would for her part, in the worst event, willingly acknowledge her relative as a second father and acquiesce in every arrangement that might be made for her welfare.
Seven months passed and the post one morning brought M. Armand Carron a letter with the Ceuta postmark, but no longer in his cousin's handwriting. The writer who signed himself Don Francisco Muñoz, parish priest of San Pedro in Ceuta, announced the death of Brigadier Santiago Carron, which had occurred seven days before the date of the letter. He stated that the brigadier, brought to the last extremity by a sudden attack of gout, had been attended, by him, Don Francisco, as priest in his last hours, and been instructed to wind up all his earthly affairs both in Ceuta and in Madrid. He was further empowered to remove the Señorita Juanita, the brigadier's daughter, from the Chamartin convent and take charge of her during her journey to Finistère where she should be delivered into the hands of her appointed guardian. The priest's letter enclosed the printed obituary handbill announcing the brigadier's decease, according to Spanish custom, the last will and testament of the deceased appointing M. Armand Carron sole executor, guardian and trustee of his only daughter Juanita, and entrusting to him the management of her fortune of one million francs, (£40,000), mentioning the banks in Paris and Amsterdam in which that sum lay in good state securities. The whole document was duly drawn up by a notary, with witnesses' signatures, seals, etc., and even with certificates of the brigadier's burial, the signatures and stamps of the civil and military authorities at Ceuta and those of the governor in command of the place.
At the close of this minute statement the priest expressed his readiness to comply with the brigadier's instructions by travelling to Madrid, receiving the young Juanita from the hands of the Sacre Cœur nuns and continuing with her the journey to Finistère, immediately upon hearing from M. Armand Carron that he was prepared to receive his lovely ward. M. Armand Carron answered by return of post that his house and arms were open to welcome his relative's orphan child. Where there came after some time another letter from Don Francisco Muñoz explaining that the brigadier, although the most methodical and careful of men, had left some trifling debts at Ceuta and there were the doctors' and undertakers' bills to be settled: also the travelling expenses for himself and the young lady which he, the priest, was not able to defray. Besides all this the papers, deeds, books and other portable property left by the brigadier, some of it very valuable, but also bulky—among which were the certificates of the state securities deposited in the French and Dutch banks—which at the express desire of the deceased would have at once to be conveyed to Finistère. He, the priest, would have to be responsible for all this, so that, what with the boarding money and fees due to the nuns, and the clothes, linen and other necessaries the young lady might require to fit herself for appearance in the world, an expense would have to be incurred of which it was difficult to calculate the exact amount. The conclusion was that he could not undertake the journey unless M. Armand Carron supplied him with a round sum of money, say four thousand francs, which he could forward in French bank notes and in a registered letter addressed not to him but to a Doña Dolores Mazaredo, a pious woman, whom her reduced fortunes had compelled to take service as a washerwoman of the Ceuta state prison.
The reason alleged by the priest for receiving the money in this roundabout way was that as the brigadier had died in debt to the state and the government might suspect that property belonging to the deceased had come into his, the priest's charge and be subject to the law of embargo on the brigadier's effects, it was desirable that every precaution should be taken to disarm suspicion and prevent injury.