Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General

by Charles James Lever

The accusations against him were manifold; from before and since the day of the governesses, he had been living a life of dishonesty and fraud. German law proceedings are not characterised by any rash impetuosity; the initial steps in F.‘s case took about eighteen months, during which he remained a prisoner. At the end of this time the judges discovered some informality in his committal; and as L. was absent from Munich, and no one at the Legation much interested in the case, the man was liberated on signing a declaration—to which Bavarian authorities, it would seem, attach value—that he was “a rogue and a vagabond;” confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of “surplusage” as though he were to give a written declaration that he was a vertebrated animal and a biped.

He went forth once more, and, difficult as it appears to the intelligence of honest and commonplace folk, he went forth to prosper and live luxuriously—so gullible is the world, so ready and eager to be cheated and deceived. Sir Edward Lytton has somewhere declared that a single number of the ‘Times’ newspaper, taken at random, would be the very best and most complete picture of our daily life—the fullest exponent of our notions, wants, wishes, and aspirations. Not a hope, nor fear, nor prejudice—not a particle of our blind trustfulness, or of our as blind unbelief, that would not find its reflex in the broadsheet. R. N. F. had arrived at the same conclusion, only in a more limited sense. The advertisement columns were all to him. What cared he for foreign wars, or the state of the Funds? as little did he find interest in railway intelligence, or “our own correspondent.” What he wanted was, the people who inquired after a missing relative—a long-lost son or brother, who was supposed to have died in the Mauritius or Mexico: an affectionate mother who desired tidings as to the burial-place of a certain James or John, who had been travelling in a particular year in the south of Spain: an inquirer for the will of Paul somebody: or any one who could supply evidence as to the marriage of Sarah Meekins alias Crouther, supposed to have been celebrated before her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Kooroobakaboo—these were the paragraphs that touched him.

Never was there such a union of intelligence and sympathy as in him! He knew everybody, and seemed not alone to have been known to, but actually beloved by, every one. It was in his arms poor Joe died at Aden. He gave away Maria at Tunis. He followed Tom to his grave at Corfu; and he was the mysterious stranger who, on board the P. and O. boat, offered his purse to Edward, and was almost offended at being denied. The way in which this man tracked the stories of families through the few lines of a newspaper advertisement was positively marvellous. Whatever was wanting in the way of evidence of this, or clue to that, came at once into his attributions.

A couple of years ago, an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, passed a winter at Rome with her daughter, and in the mixed society of that capital made acquaintance with a Polish Count of most charming manners and fascinating address. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and ended in an attachment which led to the marriage of the young lady with the distinguished exile.

On arriving in England, however, it was discovered that the accomplished Count was a common soldier, and a deserter from the Prussian army; and means were accordingly had recourse to in order to obtain a divorce, and the breach of a marriage accomplished under a fraudulent representation. While the proceedings were but in the initiative, there came a letter from Oneglia, near Nice, to the afflicted mother of the young lady, recalling to her mind the elderly gentleman with the blue spectacles who usually sat next her at the English Church at Rome. He was the writer of the present letter, who, in turning over the columns of the ‘Times’ read the melancholy story of her daughter’s betrayal and misery. By one of those fortunate accidents more frequent in novels than in life, he had the means of befriending her, and very probably of rescuing her from her present calamity. He, the writer, had actually been present at the wedding, and as a witness had signed the marriage-certificate of that same soi-disant Count Stanislaus Sobieski Something-or-other, at Lemberg, in the year ‘49, and knew that the unhappy but deserted wife was yet living. A certain momentary pressure of money prevented his at once coming to England to testify to this fact; but if a small sum, sufficient to pay a little balance he owed his innkeeper and wherewithal to make his journey to England, were forwarded to the address of Frederick Brooks, Esq., or lodged to his account at the Bank of French & Co., Florence, he would at once hasten to London and depose formally to every fact he had stated. By the merest accident I myself saw this letter, which the lady had, for more accurate information about the writer, sent to the banker at Florence, and in an instant I detected the fine Roman hand of R. N. F. It is needless to say that this shot went wide of the mark.

But that this fellow has lived for upwards of twenty years, travelling the Continent in every direction, eating and drinking at the best hotels, frequenting theatres, cafés, and public gardens, denying himself nothing, is surely a shame and a disgrace to the police of Europe, which has been usually satisfied to pass him over a frontier, and suffer him to continue his depredations on the citizens of another state. Of the obloquy he has brought upon his own country I do not speak. We must, I take it, have our scoundrels like other people; the only great grievance here is, that the fellow’s ubiquity is such that it is hard to believe that the swindler who walked off with the five watches from Hamburg is the same who, in less than eight days afterwards, borrowed fifty ducats from a waiter at Naples, and “bolted.”

Of late I have observed he has dropped his second prénom of Napoleon, and does not call himself by it. There is perhaps in this omission a delicate forbearance, a sense of refined deference to the other bearer of that name, whom he recognises as his master.

In the ingenuity of his manifold devices even religion has not escaped him, and it would be impossible to count how often he has left the “Establishment” for Rome, been converted, reconverted, reconciled, and brought home again—always, be it noted, at the special charge of so much money from the Church Fund, or a subscription from the faithful, ever zealous and eager to assist a really devout and truly sincere convert!

That this man is an aspiring and ambitious vagabond may be seen in the occasional raids he makes into the very best society, without having, at least to ordinary eyes, anything to obtain in these ventures, beyond the triumph of seeing himself where exposure and detection would be certain to be followed by the most condign punishment. At Rome, for instance—how, I cannot say—he obtained admission to the Duc de Grammont’s receptions; and at Florence, under the pretext of being a proprietor, and “a most influential” one, of the ‘Times,’ he breakfasted, by special invitation, with Baron Ricasoli, and had a long and most interesting conversation with him as to the conditions—of course political—on which he would consent to support Italian unity. These must have been done in pure levity; they were imaginative excursions, thrown off in the spirit of those fanciful variations great violinists will now and then indulge in, as though to say, “Is there a path too intricate for me to thread, is there a pinnacle too fine for me to balance on?”

A great deal of this fellow’s long impunity results from the shame men feel in confessing to have been “done” by him. Nobody likes the avowal, acknowledging, as it does, a certain defect in discrimination, and a natural reluctance to own to having been the dupe of one of the most barefaced and vulgar rogues in Europe.