Kitabı oku: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 559, July 28, 1832», sayfa 5

THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF A RASCAL

"His name is never heard."

Late one evening, a packet of letters, just arrived by the English mail, was handed to Mynheer Von Kapell, a merchant of Hamburgh. His head clerk awaited, as usual, for any orders which might arise from their contents; and was not a little surprised to observe the brow of his wealthy employer suddenly clouded; again and again he perused the letter he held, at last audibly giving vent to his feelings—

"Donder and blitzen!" he burst forth, "but this is a shock, who would have thought it? The house of Bennett and Ford to be shaken thus! What is to be done?"

"Bennett and Ford failed!"' cried the astonished clerk.

"Failed! ten thousand devils! not so bad as that; but they are in deep distress, and have suffered a heavy loss; but read, good Yansen! and let me have your advice."

The clerk read as follows:—

"London, August 21st.

"Most respected friend,

"Yours of the 5th inst. came safe to hand, and will meet prompt attention. We have to inform you, with deep regret, that the son of the trustworthy cashier of this long-established house has absconded, taking with him bills accepted by our firm, to a large amount, as per margin; and a considerable sum in cash. We have been able to trace the misguided young man to a ship bound for Holland, and we think it probable he may visit Hamburgh, (where our name is so well known and, we trust, so highly respected) for the purpose of converting these bills into cash. He is a tall, handsome youth, about five feet eleven inches, with dark hair and eyes; speaks French and German well, and was dressed in deep mourning, in consequence of the recent death of his mother. If you should be able to find him, we have to request you will use your utmost endeavours to regain possession of the bills named in the margin; but, as we have a high respect for the father of the unfortunate young man, we will further thank you to procure for him a passage on board the first vessel sailing for Batavia, paying the expense of his voyage, and giving him the sum of two hundred louis d'or, which you will place to our account current, on condition that he does not attempt to revisit England till he receives permission so to do.

"We are, most respected friend,

"Your obedient servants,

"BENNETT, FORD, AND CO.

"Mynheer Von Kapell."

"My life on't," said Yansen, "'tis the very lad I saw this day, walking up and down in front of the Exchange, who appeared half out of his wits; looking anxiously for some particular object, yet shunning general observation: his person answers the description."

"That's fortunate," said the merchant, "you must devote the morrow to searching for him; bring him to me if possible, and I'll do my utmost to serve my excellent friends, Bennett and Ford of London."

Early next morning, Yansen went to the Exchange, and kept an anxious watch for many hours in vain; he was returning hopeless, when he saw the identical youth coming out of the door of a Jew money-changer; he brushed hastily past him, exclaiming, "The unconscionable scoundrel! seventy per cent, for bills on the best house in England!"

Yansen approached him. "Young gentleman," said he, in a very mild tone, "you appear to have met with some disappointment from that griping wretch, Levi. If you have any business to transact, my house is close by; I shall be happy to treat with you."

"Willingly," replied the youth, "the sooner the better. I must leave Hamburgh at day-break."

The clerk led him to the house of the merchant, and entered it by a small side door, desiring the young man to be seated, whilst he gave some directions. In a few minutes he reappeared, bringing Von Kapell with him. The worthy Hamburgher having no talent for a roundabout way of doing business, said bluntly, "So Mynheer! we are well met; it will be useless to attempt disguise with me; look at this!" and he put into his hand the letter he had the night before received.

Overwhelmed with consternation, the young man fell at his feet.

"Oh heaven!" he cried, "I am lost for ever—my father, my indulgent, my honourable father, is heart-broken and disgraced by my villany. My mother!" Here he became nearly inaudible, and hid his face in his hands. "You," he continued, "are spared all participation in the agony your wretched son is suffering."

"Boy, boy!" said the merchant, raising him, and quite melted at this show of penitence, "listen to me! are the bills safe? if so, you may still hope."

"They are," eagerly exclaimed the youth; "how fortunate that I did not listen to the offers of that rapacious Jew. Here, sir, take them, I implore you," pulling from his breast a large pocket-book; "they are untouched. Spare but my life, and I will yet atone—Oh, spare me from a shameful death."

There was a pause, broken at last by Yansen's saying significantly to his employer, "as per margin."

The merchant turned to the unhappy young man. "Take heart," said he, "'Wenn die noth ist amgröszten die hülfe ist am nächsten.'¹¹ There's an old German proverb for you. Sit down and hear what I have to say. I think myself not a little fortunate in so soon being able to fulfil the wishes of my English correspondents; your natural alarm did not suffer you to finish their letter; you will perceive how generously they mean to act; their house's credit saved, they intend not to punish you. Read, read; and Yansen, order some eatables, and a bottle or two of my old Heidelberg hock, trouble always makes me thirsty—three glasses, my good Yansen."

Again the young Englishman hid his face, and sighed convulsively, "I do not deserve this lenity. My excellent father! this is a tribute to your virtue."

Von Kapell left his guest's reflections undisturbed, till a servant entered, who placed refreshments on a well polished oak table; when she retired, he resumed.

"And now, what devil tempted you to play the—runaway?" swallowing the term he had intended to use. "Was it for the wenches, or the dicing table?"

"Spare me, most kind and worthy sir, I intreat you! To my father I will make full confession of all my faults; but he must be the first to know the origin of my crimes."

"Well, well, take another glass of wine; you shall stay in my house till we can find a passage for you. It was but last night my good ship the Christine sailed for Batavia, and—"

"Under favour," interrupted Yansen, "she has not yet left the harbour; the wind blew too fresh for her to venture on crossing the sand-banks at night, and it is now only shifting round a point or two."

"You are lucky, youngster;" quickly added the merchant, "the Christine has noble accommodations; you shall aboard this evening. Put these in the chest, good Yansen," handing him the bills, "and count me out the two hundred louis d'or the boy is to have. Come, man! finish your meal, for I see," said he, regarding a vane on the gable of an opposite house, "you have no time to lose."

The meal was finished—the money given—the worthy merchant adding as much good advice as the brief space would permit. The Briton was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, promised amendment, and returned the warm grasp of Von Kapell, unable to speak for his tears. Yansen accompanied him on board, gave the owner's most particular charge to the skipper, to pay his passenger every attention on the voyage. The vessel cleared the harbour—was in a few hours out of sight—and the next morning, Mynheer Von Kapell wrote to London a full account of the transaction, returning the bills he had so fortunately recovered.

In less than a fortnight, the following letter reached the good old German:—

"Sir,—We have to inform you, that we never lost the bills sent in your last favour, every one of which is fabricated, and our acceptance forged. Our cashier has no son, nor has he lost a wife. We are sincerely grieved that your friendly feeling towards our house should have led you to listen to so palpable a cheat.

"We remain, with great respect, yours,

"BENNETT, FORD, AND CO.

"P.S. If you should ever hear again of the person you have, at your own expense, sent to Batavia, we shall be glad to know."

What can be said of the good old German's feelings, but that they may "be more easily conceived than described?"—Monthly Magazine.

NEW BOOKS

OTWAY'S "VENICE PRESERVED."

(Hundreds of our readers who have again and again heard

 
Belvidera pour her soul in love—
 

may not be aware of the precise historical connexion of the incidents of Otway's play with the events of history. They are taken, in the main, from an atrocious conspiracy formed at Venice in 1618. Sir Henry Wotton, then English ambassador at Venice, writes as follows on the 25th of May, in the above year:—"The whole town is here at present in horror and confusion upon the discovering of a foul and fearful conspiracy of the French against this state; whereof no less than thirty have already suffered very condign punishment, between men strangled in prison, drowned in the silence of the night, and hanged in public view; and yet the bottom is invisible." Beyond this quaint, meagre, chronological notice, little is actually established of the details, although the event is perhaps as familiarly known by name to English readers as any other in the History of Venice. We are, therefore, happy to see the affair treated with minute consideration in the second volume of "Sketches from Venetian History," in the Family Library; and so interesting is the narrative, or rather the facts and conjectures, to the lover of history, as well as to the unstudious playgoer, that we are induced to quote nearly every line of the passage. The editor observes:—)

Muratori indeed has scarcely exaggerated the obscurity in which this incident is enveloped when he affirms that only one fact illuminates its darkness; namely that several hundred French and Spaniards engaged in the service of the Republic were arrested and put to death. The researches of Comte Daru have brought to light some hitherto unknown contemporary documents; but even the inexhaustible diligence of that most laborious, accurate, and valuable writer has been baffled in the hope of obtaining certainty as its reward; and he has been compelled to content himself with the addition of one hypothesis more to those already proposed in explanation of this mystery.

All that can be positively affirmed is that during the summer of 1617, Jacques Pierre, a Norman by birth, whose youth had been spent in piratical enterprises in the Levantine seas, from which he had acquired no inconsiderable celebrity, fled from the service of the Spanish Duke d'Ossuna, Viceroy of Naples; and, having offered himself at the Arsenal of Venice, was engaged there in a subordinate office. Not many days after his arrival in the Lagune, Pierre denounced to the Inquisitors of State a conspiracy projected, as he said, by the Duke d'Ossuna, and favoured by Don Alfonso della Cueva, Marquis de Bedemar, at that time resident ambassador from Spain. The original minutes of Pierre's disclosures, written in French, still exist among the correspondence of M. Leon Bruslart, the contemporary ambassador from the court of France to the Republic; and they were translated into Italian, with which language Pierre was but imperfectly acquainted, by his friend Renault, in order that they might be presented to the Inquisitors. In this plot, Pierre avowed himself to be chief agent; his pretended abandonment of the Duke d'Ossuna forming one part of the stratagem: and he added that his commission enjoined him to seduce the Dutch troops employed in the late war, who still remained in Venice and its neighbourhood; to fire the city; to seize and massacre the nobles; to overthrow the existing government; and ultimately to transfer the state to the Spanish crown. The sole immediate step taken by the Inquisitors in consequence of these revelations was the secret execution of Spinosa, a Neapolitan, whom Pierre described as an emissary of the Duke d'Ossuna; and whom he appears to have regarded with jealousy as a spy upon his own conduct. For the rest, the magistrates contented themselves, as it, seems, by awaiting the maturity of the plot with silent vigilance. Ten months elapsed during which Pierre communicated on the one hand with the Duke d'Ossuna, unsuspicious of his treachery, and on the other with the Inquisitors; till at the expiration of that term he was seized by an order of the X, while employed on his duties with the Fleet, and drowned without the grant of sufficient delay even for previous religious confession. More, perhaps many more, than three hundred French and Spaniards engaged in various naval and military capacities were at the same time delivered to the executioner; and Renault, after undergoing numerous interrogatories, and being placed seven times on the cord, was hanged by one foot on a gibbet on the Piazzetta, which day after day presented similar exhibitions of horror.

This evidence of Pierre remained at the time concealed in the bosoms of the Inquisitors to whom it had been delivered; and no official declarations satisfied public curiosity as to the cause of the sanguinary executions which deformed the Capital. A rumour indeed spread itself abroad, and, although not traced to any certain authority, was universally credited, that a great peril had been escaped; that Venice had trembled on the very brink of destruction; and that the Spaniards had meditated her ruin. Popular fury was accordingly directed against the Marquis de Bedemar; and so fierce were the menaces of summary vengeance that the ambassador was forced to protest his innocence before the Collegio, more in the spirit of one deprecating punishment than defying accusation. He then earnestly solicited protection against the rabble surrounding his palace; for "God knows," affirmed his pale and affrighted secretary more than once, "the danger of our residence is great!" The Vice-doge, who during the interregnum between the death of one chief magistrate and the election of another presided over the Collegio, replied vaguely, coldly, and formally; and, the application having been renewed without any more favourable result, Bedemar, justly apprehensive for his safety, seized a pretext for withdrawing, till a successor to his embassy was appointed. Meantime, considerable doubts were entertained, not only by the resident foreign ministers,—especially by that of France, better informed than his brethren through the possession of Pierre's minutes,—but by the Venetian senators themselves, also, whether any conspiracy whatever had really existed. Nevertheless, in spite of these misgivings not obscurely expressed, it was not till the expiration of five months that the X presented a report to the Senate, detailing the information which they had received and the views upon which they had acted. That report however is so manifestly contradicted in many very important instances by Pierre's depositions, that it must be considered as drawn up and garbled solely with the intention of making a case; and therefore as revealing only so much truth dashed and brewed with a huge proportion of falsehood, as it suited the interests of the magistrates to exhibit to public view. All mention of the denouncements of Pierre during the long period of ten months is carefully suppressed, and yet no fact in history is more distinctly proved than that he did so communicate. The first intimation of the plot is there said to have been given but a few days before it was to have been executed, by two Frenchmen, Montcassin and Balthazar Juven, whom Pierre had endeavoured to seduce. "Look at these Venetians," said the daring conspirator one day to his apparent proselytes, "they affect to chain the lion; but the lion sometimes devours his master, especially when that master uses him ill." According to their further evidence, some troops despatched by the Duke d'Ossuna were to land by night on the Piazzetta and to occupy all the strong holds of the city; numerous treasonable agents already within the walls were to master the depots of arms; and fire, rapine, and massacre were to bring the enterprise to consummation.