Thus she justified the general against her own suspicions; but she could never get over the theft of the necklace by the "clever man;" and one day, when she was deploring his conduct, and I suggested that she might have the image of the necklace cut upon his monument, as a perpetual reminder to her, when she visited the grave, of the wickedness in the heart of "the best of men," the Madame shrugged her shoulders with a half-approving smile, and said,—
"Well, you may joke, if you like, but I know something of men; they are all bad, the best of them; and General Alverosa, with all his faults and his crimes, was a better man than any other my eyes ever rested upon;" and she looked me curiously in the face at that, as I bade her good day, and went away, thinking that, perhaps, I was properly enough rebuked, and that, may be, no better man had lived, as surely no more remarkably gifted, elegant, and strange one, than "Colonel Novena," had I ever met.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE: A KNOT STILL UNTIED.
A ROBBERY—ONE OF THE FEMALE ATTACHÉS OF THE GREAT KOSSUTH—A WIDOW LADY OF RANK IN HUNGARY—KOSSUTH'S SISTER—A BOARDING HOUSE AT NEWARK, N. J., AND ITS INMATES—SUNDRY FACTS AND CONSIDERATIONS—BEAUTY WINS—AN INVESTIGATION—SERVANTS EXAMINED—THE PATENT-ROOF MAKER—"TRACING" A MAN—A HOLLOW WALKING-STICK WITH MONEY IN IT—NO CLEW YET—A PATHETIC BLUNDER—REVELATIONS IN DREAMS—A BIT OF PAPER TELLS A STORY—AN IDENTIFICATION—THIEF ARRESTED—A SETTLEMENT MADE, WITH CONDITIONS—A TRIUMPHAL VISIT TO THE WIDOW—A "WHITE LIE," AND AN ANNOUNCEMENT—DOUBTING—PERFECT EVIDENCE SOMETIMES IMPERFECT—THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM; WHO DID THE ROBBERY?
In August, 1858 (so the notes in my diary of that year say, but somehow it seems to me as if it were more than ten years before), I was waited upon by a beautiful Hungarian lady, residing at Newark, N. J., to see if I could render her any aid in ferreting out the thief who had robbed her of eight hundred and forty dollars. She was a most charming lady, and with her pitiable story won all my sympathies. She came to the country with the sister of the great Magyar leader, Kossuth, which sister was at the time, as I understood the story, teaching a select school in Newark, and the lady who called upon me had been a teacher under her for a while.
She was very accomplished, but for some reason had left her vocation as a teacher, and gone to making gold-lace goods for some firm in New York, who were paying her larger wages than she could make at teaching. (So much more ready is the world to pay well for the brilliants which sparkle by the reflection of light from their surface, than for brilliance of mind, which is a light unto itself, and betokens in its possessor a wealth beyond that of rubies and pearls.) She was very artistic, and in her happier days had beguiled her time in learning many little arts, which, in her exile and poverty in America, she turned to good practical account.
Her lace-work she did at home, and she kept two or three boarders besides, generally, together with an Hungarian servant, a sort of slave, or attaché of her father's house at home, and whom she felt obliged to watch over, and an English girl. Her boarders were two Hungarians at the time I made her acquaintance, and a middle-aged American, from the West. One of the former was a lawyer, having his office at No. 5 Beekman Street, New York, and "dragging along," doing a little business in New York, and a little also in Newark; a man of ability, and speaking the English language well. I think he had, at one time, been Kossuth's confidential secretary; at any rate, he was quite distinguished for something in the Hungarian revolution. It was at his suggestion that the lady had called on me, and when she came to describe him,—for I had never seen him, he having simply heard of me through a brother lawyer, in whose office he occupied a desk,—I at first suspected him of the theft in question. Another boarder was a music teacher, who got on poorly enough, and who, had it not been that some relative in Hungary occasionally sent him a remittance, would hardly have been able to pay his board bill, which was, I believe, but five and a half, or six dollars a week.