Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846», sayfa 17

"ROGUES IN OUTLINE."

Birbone I

Signor Rusca

"Rusca the lawyer, an exceeding knave." – Pope.

"Currunt verba licet, manus est velocior illis

Nondum linguâ suâ, dextra peregit opus." – Martial.

A more knowing man in his way than Signor Avocato Rusca R – it would not be easy to find; so first-rate is he in his style, though his style may not be quite first-rate! His father intended him for a lawyer, whilst nature qualified him for a cheat; and, as there seemed to be nothing absolutely incompatible in the prosecution of these two professions,

 
"He sought, without offence to either,
How he might deal in both together;"
 

in doing which for a season, he accumulated much useful knowledge, besides laying the foundation of his future fortune. Whether in his earlier career he followed the practice of his learned predecessor, Paulus, and sought, like him, to augment his fees by pleading in a hired Sardonyx,⁷⁴ we have not heard; but his passion for jewels, none who have seen him without his gloves (and we never saw him otherwise) can for a moment doubt.

 
"Tight girt with gems, in massive mountings set,
Beneath their weight his tumid fingers sweat."
 

When he had come to find that his dealings as dealer better repaid the cost of his earlier education than the teasing uncertainties of the law, a sense of filial duty perhaps, and of inclination certainly, led him ultimately to give up all his time and talents, together with whatever little money he had accumulated, legally or otherwise, to the acquisition of practical archæology. He had seen enough of antiquarian transactions already, to convince him of the unlimited credulity of a certain class of connoisseurs – this knowledge was important, and he began to apply it presently. Having made himself a competent scholar, (he could quote Horace, and had Seneca's⁷⁵ moral precepts at his finger-ends;) being plausible in speech, and knowing the market-price of every ancient relic by rote, he could not but succeed; he succeeded accordingly – and is now considered throughout Italy as a mezzo galant'uomo of first-rate abilities and tact!

By putting himself early under efficient tutelage at Rome, and doing as they did there, he soon outstripped most of his masters in his art; the art, that is, of buying "uncertain merchandise," as low as duplicity can buy of ignorance and want; and of re-selling at as high a price as credulity will pay to cunning.⁷⁶ His unusual astuteness made it really diverting, when you knew your man, to have dealings with him, otherwise it was likely to turn out an expensive amusement. Our acquaintance with him began in the full maturity of his powers, when his mode of cross-questioning false witnesses who brought him soi-disant antiques to sell, and his lawyer-like mode of eliciting the truth, were capital. How he would lie! and what lungs he had to lie with! immensa cavi spirant mendacia folles! What action! what volubility of tongue! what anecdotes! and then only to see how he would look a false Augustus in the face, and discern that wily sovereign from a thousand counterfeits; or when a sly forger brought him a modern gold coin, carefully coated in mould – how he knew by instinct that it was an imposture, and would not condescend to exhume and expose the fraud. Like all knaves, he would take incredible pains to prove that there was not a more honest man than himself breathing – and when he considered himself to have quite established this on his own showing, he would sometimes speak with "honest indignation" of men who were palpable rogues: assuring you all the while, that it gave him pain thus to bear testimony against his neighbour, but then every honest man owed it to his Pope and to the people to expose Birbonism. On one occasion, when he had a large batch of silver Emperors for sale, we said we must see about their prices in Mionnet.⁷⁷ Upon which, with a look of frightened honesty, he asked us if "we really knew what we were talking of?" "Perfectly," we replied. "Well, sir," continued he, "Mionnet was a Frenchman; did you ever know an honest Frenchman?" "Not as many as we could have wished to know; but we had known some." "We had in that case," he confessed, "the advantage over him —he never had! As to Mionnet's book, it was written, at least so thought Rusca, with a frightfully corrupt view, being published during the French occupancy of Italy, for the joint benefit of Mr M. and the Bibliotheque du Roi. I admit," quoth our lawyer, "that the French only entertained a natural wish (nay, sir, as far as the mood was optative merely I commend it as a highly laudable one) in desiring to have the best monetary collection in Europe; but was it honourable, or just, to pledge this Mionnet to affix such prices for rare and better specimens, (such as I have the honour to show you here!) when both they and he knew them to be preposterous, and then to launch forth this misguiding book as a guide? This precious book, sir, was in the hands of all M – 's myrmidons, and the only book of appeal then extant; this– (thumping his fist, by way of emphasis, upon our copy of it) – this, which has been the ruin of Italy, and is the degradation of France! I only wish you could hear my friend Sestini (quel numen degli numismcatici) inveigh against this man and his prices, with less reluctance, I assure you, than I feel in doing it, and much more powerfully too, because he knows so much more; but come now, if you won't think me vain, I will show you the difference between honesty and dishonesty. I wish it was of some one else I was about to speak, but truth compels me here to introduce my own name. Last week that pleasant countryman of yours, Lord X – , – do you know him? (we did for a goose!) – comes to buy some gold coins of me; one of the lot he fixed upon was a Becker, and so of course only worth what it weighed. He had purchased it for fifty Napoleons of me, and we went to his bankers together for the payment. There, having duly received the money, I requested him to let me see once more the coins he had just purchased of me – there might have been a dozen – and instantly picking out the Becker, I pushed him over his fifty Napoleons again, and said, "Milord, I cannot let you have that coin." "Why?" says he, alarmed and in anger. "Because it is false, Milord! – and I was quite grieved," added our ingenuous informant, "to see how much Lord X – was disconcerted at this disclosure." "You did not let so pretty a coin go a-begging, I dare say?" said we with laudable curiosity and interest. "No, two days ago in comes Coco – you know Coco?" we smiled. Know Coco! did we know St Peter's? did we know the Pope? for whom did Rusca take us, we wonder? "He came," prosecuted Signor R – , "to see if I had by me any first-rate imitations from the antique, for he knew a gentleman who might fancy something of the sort; and, as soon as he had set eyes upon this Becker, he must have it; it was just the thing to tempt Lord X – ; and so I let him have it for five times its supposititious value, but not for a tenth of what Lord X – would, I knew, buy it for a second time as an undoubted antique; and lest that rogue should at any time take liberties with my name, (for he is capable of anything,) and say he had been duped by Avocato Rusca into the purchase of a false thing for a true, here is a document with his name to it, which I then and there caused him to sign, which proves the contrary. I met him to-day, and he seems much pleased with Lord X – 's liberality, who has bought the coin!!" The above is a sample of Avocato Rusca's confessions, and of his somewhat original notions of honesty! Once, however, our honest friend forgot himself in a purchase we made of him. And no wonder, for we had also forgotten ourselves; for the time when we transacted business was the gloaming, and the room being dark had lent its aid to the deception. We had also an engagement to dine out, and it was getting late, and we were in a hurry. But that same night, on returning from our party, we had looked again at what we had bought, and then, first perceiving our mistake, determined, if possible, to repair it by repairing early next morning to the Minerva Hotel, there to surprise him in his dressing-gown, by which bold coup-de-main (having pre-arranged in our own minds what we should take away with us in lieu of what we brought back) we carried our point at last! – and hardly carried it; for while the new batch and the old confronted each other on his table, the one being fair, the other like himself, ill-favoured in appearance, we saw his restless glance move wistfully from the one to the other. Three times in one minute his countenance fell; he coughed, he hesitated, he cospetto'd once, he wished we had made known our mind over night; he cospetto'd again, and finally was about to reconsider the affair, when, not to be foiled by a rogue, we threw it upon his honour, (of which he had not a particle,) and, by the extravagance of such a compliment, prevailed. "He had never cheated us before," (which was strictly true; but the reason, which the reader will have no difficulty to guess, we did not think it necessary or prudent to assign;) would he, after so long an acquaintance with us, change his tactics now? – we need not ask him – we were "persuasissimi" that he would not, neither did he! We removed the temptation out of his way as soon as we could, and felt, as we went home, that we had achieved that morning as great a piece of diplomacy, and as difficult, as ever did Lord Palmerston when he was minister for our foreign affairs; and grateful were we to Apollo, the god of medicine, who had for once assisted us to overreach Mercury, the god of rogues.

Birbone II

Coco

– "Adspice quantâ

Voce negat quæ sit ficti constantia vultûs!" – Juv. Sat. vii.

We cut our pen afresh to say a few words concerning that arch-impostor, that "Fourbum imperator," Coco the coiner. Had it not been for the prosperity of the St Angelo ministry at Naples, that three-headed Cerberus of iniquity, of whom the people,

 
"Tre Angeli a noi più recan danno
Che trenta orrendi Demoni non fanno,"
 

had it not been that their success seemed to militate against such an inference, we might have supposed that Coco, poor, starving, and in utter disesteem, had been thus let to live, to prove by a sad contrast the truth of the old adage – that "honesty is the best policy." Coco is the very impersonation of wiliness and subtlety – a fox amongst foxes – the Metternich of his craft; – he has cheated every dealer in turn, and by turns has learnt to know the internal arrangements of every prison throughout the kingdom. By sheer force of talent he has been able, like Napoleon, to maintain his cause single-handed against a host of rivals who would crush him, and cannot; and, whenever he is not closeted elsewhere, he is either holding a privy council with St Angelo, or transacting busines with his Serene Highness of Salerno, against whom (par parenthese) we have not a word to say. Cicero's oration for Milo is not better than Coco's oration for Coco; and to hear him plead it personally for the first time, is certainly entertaining. He seems to have taken that oration for his model, setting out, as Tully for that client did, with a staunch negation of the charges alleged against him; but embarrassed, as he proceeds in his harangue, to maintain himself strictly honest, he gradually throws off reserve, converts your room into a court of justice, and, confronting imaginary accusers, endeavours to shake their testimony by making out that they are just as great rogues as himself! "Coco! say over again just half a dozen of those sentences– you know where to begin – that you have so often been the habit of indulging me with; not the whole speech, Coco, if you please." "Eccelenza, no! I was saying, then, that I was in advance of my age, and that, if I had been born in France or England in place of Naples, I should not now have been called Coco the cheat, the thief, the birbone, but Sir Coco – or Monsieur le Marquis de Cocon. Look at the things I have done, sir, and see what they have done for me. No sooner have I devised some new galanteria– elegant, classical, and sure to take – when it is enough to whisper 'Coco's,' to bring it into discredit: a great outcry is raised against me as its author, and, like a second Galileo, I am cast into prison! Knowledge is not power at Naples; for my countrymen know that I have knowledge enough when I mulct their ignorance, as I sometimes do. It is too much knowledge that has brought me into all my scrapes and difficulties! Do you doubt it, signor? Why, then, was I first sent to prison? – why, but because my mint was frequently preferred to that of his majesty here, and he feared lest my Ferdinands should drive his Ferdinands out of the market! Had I done the same in England, I suppose they would, on discovering my talent, have made me master of their mint, in place of sending me to expiate my offence in a dungeon —basta about that affair! – but when I had given up making Ferdinands, and took to minting Domitians, what business was that to the King of Naples, I wonder, unless indeed I had put his name to that tyrant's head? Yet he sent me a second time to prison for it, notwithstanding for which in return I have taken the liberty of sending him to a warmer place. See, here's a pretty baioccho – Ferdinand's head on one side, and a 'concordia-Augustorum' on the other, where the devil and he are holding hands over a lighted altar, he wanting to withdraw his hand, – but the devil's clutch is too tight for that! – whilst a little imp is putting a bit of live coal into his palm, and another is doing the same under his right foot! For four elegant horses in bronze, of which I forgot the age, and sold them to St Angelo as antiques, I was sent to prison again, and a third time. Though, when it suited him last year to sell off certain old horseflesh that had been many years on his hands as young, his purchaser of course got no redress. Out upon that old Birbone! with his galleries, his harems, and his horses; – but he eats too much, and is never well, – a great consolation to me, who might else have repined at his successes; but when I compare my health with his, I bless the good St Januario who keeps me poor! Again, I ought to be grateful to our good Saint that, though men may pretend that I lie and cheat, (which perhaps I do a little,) you never heard any body say of me, what all the world says of HIM, that I am cruel, —mai, you never heard that; and if I make money occasionally in some way that it don't sound well to speak of, what then? I never hoard it up, the lottery office is my banker, and it circulates again presently. And as to cheating, if we look it boldly in the face, and see in what company we cheat, why should I be ashamed of what all the world does here from King Ferdinand, to Beppo Tuzzi of the Mergellina? Didn't Ferdinand try hard to cheat you last year in the sulphur question? and would he not have succeeded, too, unless you had thought of mixing up the sulphur with some nitre and charcoal, and of converting it into a question of gunpowder!" "That's true, Coco! and now tell us of your last device for raising the wind." "Here it is," and Coco has presented us with a small opaque lachrymatory, glistening all over in the exquisite irridescence of old glass. "Was it not beautiful?" he enquired. "Yes; and ancient as well," replied we; "the decomposition of the glass showed that, and the elegant and classical form of the vessel showed it too." "Well! he would manufacture just such another before us, if we would like to see it done!" "Comè? we should be delighted!" "Dunque e fatto subito, now that I have shown how it is to be effected – just as when that great sea-captain, quel famoso Cristoforo Colombo" – "Yes, yes! Coco, never mind about him just now." "Ah, your excellency, I perceive, knows the story! Well, here you see is a small clay vessel moulded from the antique; here a small packet which I untie; and here a little gum-water in a phial." We require no other materials – a child might do the rest. In the packet now open, we remark a quantity of a beautiful, many-coloured glass-dust, in the midst of which appear thousands of filmy flakes that have been scraped off from the sides of old lachrymatories, and present every hue of colour. In a twinkling Coco has gummed the vessel all over, and in less than a minute he has rolled round its sides a rainbow robe of the most rich and glowing colours, while not a speck of clay remains visible by which to make out the fraud! "Eccolo!" says he, placing the beautiful fabrication in our hand; "Eccolo! do you think that for such a work as that I ought to have been sent for the twentieth time to prison?" Fearful of having our moral sense dazzled by the glass into making some indiscreet admission, we now change the theme. We had heard that morning a good story; it was "the case of Coco versus Casanuova," in which the cleverness of the former rogue had prevailed against his equally astute rival, who had himself been so obliging as to favour us with the full particulars thereof, in words like the following: – "Coco – (you know Coco?") – (Coco and I smiled, for we knew each other perfectly,) – "Well, he presents himself one day before me in a shop in the Piazza degli Orefici, bringing in a coin in his hand, which he throws down carelessly on the counter, asking me what price he should put upon it? On taking it up, I see 'Υελιων,' which, with the common type of the Velian Lion, as we all know, vale poco; but, in place of a lion, this had the Athenian diota (or two-eared amphora) upon the field of the reverse. Knowing that the rogue was eyeing me to see how I liked it, in order that he might charge for it accordingly, I asked him doubtingly whether he was quite sure it was genuine, (entertaining no doubt on that subject myself.) 'Rather an ingenious question for a profound connossieur like Casanuova, to put to a poor devil who has the good fortune for once in his life to buy something good. You have no doubt about it; but if you say you have, I will take it to Tuzzi, and get his opinion first.' Fearing to lose it if he did, I confessed that I believed it genuine, and then asked him his price. 'He had refused fifty; we might have it at seventy dollars.' Of course I 'was astonished,' and offered 'forty – Would that do?' No! honest men had but one price; seventy he had said – seventy, he repeated, was the price.' I bought it, and paid for it and took it home, and consulted my books, and there there was no such type to be seen – learned friends who called upon me had never seen its fellow – it was pronounced an inedited coin, as indeed it turned out afterwards to be! The annual meeting of our archæological society was at hand. I determined to memorialize my coin, and to read my memoir at the meeting. In three weeks I had finished my labours. There were some striking conjectures in the paper, which I went early to deliver. We had waited half an hour for the Prince St Georgio. At last he came. 'Look!' said I, putting the coin into his hands, (and I said not a word beyond this.) Mightily pleased he seemed with it at once, looking from me to it and from it to me. I thought he was going to propose for it. At last he spoke – it was but a word; but his emphasis and accent made my ears tingle. 'Excellent!' said he; but I was reassured on hearing him add, 'Casanuova has the luck of St Angelo, and nobody ever took him in.' Relieved by this announcement, I could now afford to be modest, and said it was but by accident that I had first seen the coin. 'Not first, Casanuova," said the prince – 'but second, I believe. I saw it first.' 'You!' said I, aghast; 'you saw this coin, and did not buy it?' 'Costava! it cost too much; besides, to tell you the truth, Coco, who had just made it, told me it was expressly intended for the cabinet of quel dottissimo suo amico J. Battista Casanuova.'" "'Tis all true," said Coco, rubbing his hands; "and I believe I can do almost any thing I like with any of them." "Except not to tell lies, and not to impose upon antiquaries?" "Caro lei! these are the very things I like to do most, and do accordingly."

"What has become of Coco?" asked we of an orefice, three years later, on finding ourselves a second time in Naples, and nothing doubting, as he had not been to visit us, that he was doing Baron Trenck, and exercising his ingenuity in prison. We were surprised, therefore, to learn that he now kept a smart shop, and was a sort of joint householder with a respectable man, and that nothing particular had occurred to tarnish his reputation for now nearly a year! The shop we had already noticed as one of promise on the outside; for, as yet, we had not found time to visit its interior. It stood half-way up the Toledo, on the left hand side as you go to the Studii. Etruscan jars were painted on all the shutters, and bits of statues and bas-reliefs bossaged and projected from the house front. In face of each window was an enormous shelving tray, full of all sorts of odds and ends, from the Flood downwards, the whole under protection of a strong iron grillage. In one corner of the shop (we had now gone forth to visit it) sat a pretty young woman, in spectacles, reading Manzoni, or sleeping over him (the aforesaid spectacles prevented our noticing which) as he lay open in her lap; while on another chair, in the opposite corner, an old man, almost in his dotage, looked wistfully round his shop, not suppressing an anxious sigh when the scrutiny was done. In an inner room of his palace – for such, in derision of its owner, was the house called – busy in preparing and cleaning the specimens that were about to be transferred into the shop, lurked, like some keen-eyed tarantula, the industrious Coco himself, with such an eye to business, and such an ear, that we were no sooner turned in from the street than he, too, had turned in, and was beside us. – "Well, Coco, bon giorrio, &c. &c. &c., 'tis said you have become an honest man at last; how does this new trade answer?" "Not at all," sighed the old man behind us. "Nonsense!" rejoined Coco; "whoever heard of a man's making money all at once? Nothing stake, nothing make – there's no mending where there's no spending. 'Necesse est facere sumptum qui quærit lucrum, dice bene il Plauto.'" "Allegro though you be, Coco, I am not. With you nothing can go ill, for you have nothing to lose, either in money or in character; but to me, who am old, bankruptcy and a prison are not matters of jest." "Nonsense, again, you are not going to prison yet!" "Not at all, I hope, Coco," said the poor little lazy woman in the corner. "If I had my 5000 ducats, and my vineyard, again, at Sorrento, that you persuaded me to sell for your Scavi at Calvi, which never brought me any thing but a few lamps, and lots of lachrymatories!" "Basta, 'tis too late to talk about what you would do if you had it to do over again. Let bygones be bygones. Who knows what this gentleman may come to buy of us? and he never would have come to you but from his previous acquaintance with me. Isn't it so, sir? Ah, there are some pretty things there," continued he, following our eyes into a placarded recess. "Antichi Sono?" and we look into his face; "I'd as lief sell my own flesh and blood, as any thing here that was not. Think, sir, of my position. I am the responsible head of this firm. That good old gentleman, having begun antiquities late in life, does not know much about them. The signora there has taste, plenty; but it is not a lady's business to know the prices of things she may value or take an interest in; for suppose, now, she should wish to make money by the sale of Coco, she would hardly know what to ask for him." The old man fidgeted; Coco shot a glance at the blue spectacles, which were raised at this sally. But the signora, who sat behind them, said nothing. "Whence came these same things?" we inquire, for on going close up to them, they seemed not unfamiliar to us. Before Coco could coin the forthcoming lie, the old man had told us whence they came. "From Baroni's shop!" adding that they had cost 700 ducats. This confirmed the story we had heard from the beginning to its end. Our clever scoundrel had contrived, it seems, to engage the old man in a speculative excavation at Calvi; from which a few lachrymatories turning up, the old man's cupidity was excited; and, on the false representations made to him by Coco, he sold his estate; left the country; and hiring the expensive shop in which we see him, leaves Coco to stock it! which he does by the purchase of such merchandise as his friends have to dispose of – "When," says he, "they don't sell them too dear!" The old man admits that his employer is very clever; but says quietly, that he has not much fiducia in his honesty. Coco says, on his side, that his employer is mean in his conduct towards him, and pays his activity and zeal in a very niggardly manner. Thus neither is satisfied with the other. Meantime the public are saying, that in less than a year the shop will be again for sale; that Coco will have bolted; and that the old man, if he be alive, will be fretting his soul out in St Elmo! Nobody speculates upon what is to become of the lady with the blue spectacles. We predict, that should she be alive, and the old man dead, in the course of another year, she will have entirely given up her taste for things old and curious, and have become curious to try something new and comely; if, indeed, Coco shall have left her any money to indulge in such a fancy.

On returning from this visit to our hotel, about an hour later, we found Coco under the gateway, and on the look-out for us. More solito, he had something to show us. The porter looked after us inquiringly, as we bid him follow up-stairs; but was surprised by a counter look, and by our calling him by his name. Even on the stairs, he could not forbear sundry short ejaculations, by way of preparing us for what we were to see presently. "Ah! ché bella roba! Ah, what flowers of the mint I have brought you to see to-day! – bought for a song – at three Carlini a-piece! You shall have them at three and a half – I content myself with small gains. But you, sir, who are discreet, and know the value of these things, shall judge whether I have told you a falsehood or no." By this time we were in our room. The dirty bag was untied; and there leaped out of it, not indeed a cat, but a large heap of consular coins, with which we seemed forthwith to be vastly familiar; and no wonder; since, on inspecting them, we found that the whole had been ours not twelve hours before, we having disposed of them to a refiner for their weight in silver, to melt. "Take them all, sir, tutti quanti, at three Carlines and a half a-piece." "No; nor yet for two Carlines, Coco," said we, putting the paper from us. Upon which the cunning fellow hoped he had not been taken in; having certainly purchased them in the persuasion of reselling them, as a catch, to us. "The Italian marquis, of whom he had bought them, assured him, on his honour, that he had made a rare bargain with him." "Are the coins your own, Coco?" "To my cost are they, signor, unless you re-purchase them." "I sold them only this morning, Coco, for the weight of the silver; you must try somebody else." Upon which Coco, with admirable presence of mind, replaced them in his bag, and said "he had made a mistake!" "We regretted that he had not purchased them from us at the rate of one Carline and a-half per piece; in place of having been duped into paying three and a-half." Though he saw plainly, from our manner, that we were aware of his roguery, he was not put out; but shrugging his shoulders, and twitching the angles of a mouth remarkable for its mobility, he merely said – "Pazienza! a bargain's a bargain; we grow wiser as we grow older," and speedily withdrew.