In the following reminiscences will frequently be mentioned a lady who
played a great part in the annals of the police from 1848 to 1866. We
will call her "Wanda von Chabert." Born in Galicia of German parents,
and carefully brought up in every way, when only sixteen she married,
from love, a rich and handsome officer of noble birth. The young
couple, however, lived beyond their means, and when the husband died
suddenly, two years after they were married, she was left anything but
well off.
As Wanda had grown accustomed to luxury and amusement, a quiet life in
her parents' house did not suit her any longer. Even while she was
still in mourning for her husband, she allowed a Hungarian magnate to
make love to her. She went off with him at a venture, and continued the
same extravagant life which she had led when her husband was alive, of
her own volition. At the end of two years, however, her lover left her
in a town in North Italy, almost without means. She was thinking of
going on the stage, when chance provided her with another resource,
which enabled her to reassert her position in society. She became a
secret police agent, and soon was one of their most valuable members.
In addition to the proverbial charm and wit of a Polish woman, she also
possessed high linguistic attainments, and spoke Polish, Russian,
French, German, English, and Italian, with almost equal fluency and
correctness. Then she had that encyclopedic polish which impresses
people much more than the most profound learning of the specialist, She
was very attractive in appearance, and she knew how to set off her good
looks by all the arts of dress and coquetry.
In addition to this, she was a woman of the world in the widest sense
of the term; pleasure-loving, faithless, unstable, and therefore never
in any danger of really losing her heart, and consequently her head.
She used to change the place of her abode, according to what she had to
do. Sometimes she lived in Paris among the Polish emigrants, in order
to find out what they were doing, and maintained intimate relations
with the Tuileries and the Palais Royal at the same time; sometimes she
went to London for a short time, or hurried off to Italy to watch the
Hungarian exiles, only to reappear suddenly in Switzerland, or at one
of the fashionable German watering-places.
In revolutionary circles, she was looked upon as an active member of
the great League of Freedom, and diplomatists regarded her as an
influential friend of Napoleon III.
She knew everyone, but especially those men whose names were to be met
with every day in the journals, and she counted Victor Emmanuel,
Rouher, Gladstone, and Gortschakoff among her friends as well as
Mazzini, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mieroslawsky, and Bakunin.
In the spring of 185- she was at Vevey on the lovely lake of Geneva,
and went into raptures when talking to an old German diplomatist about
the beauties of nature, and about Calame, Stifter, and Turgenev, whose
"Diary of a Hunter," had just become fashionable. One day a man
appeared at the table d'hote, who excited unusual attention, and hers
especially, so that there was nothing strange in her asking the
proprietor of the hotel what his name was. She was told that he was a
wealthy Brazilian, and that his name was Don Escovedo.
Whether it was an accident, or whether he responded to the interest
which the young woman felt for him, at any rate she constantly met him
whereever she went, whether taking a walk, or on the lake or looking at
the newspapers in the reading-room. At last she was obliged to confess
to herself that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Tall slim,
and yet muscular, the young, beardless Brazilian had a head which any
woman might envy, features not only beautiful and noble, but also
extremely delicate, dark eyes which possessed a wonderful charm, and
thick, auburn, curly hair, which completed the attractiveness and the
strangeness of his appearance.
They soon became acquainted, through a Prussian officer whom the
Brazilian had asked for an introduction to the beautiful Polish
lady--for Frau von Chabert was taken for one in Vevey. She, cold and
designing as she was, blushed slightly when he stood before her for the
first time; and when he gave her his arm, he could feel her hand
tremble slightly on it. The same evening they went out riding together,
the next he was lying at her feet, and on the third she was his. For
four weeks the lovely Wanda and the Brazilian lived together as if they
had been in Paradise, but he could not deceive her searching eyes any
longer.
Her sharp and practiced eye had already discovered in him that
indefinable something which makes a man appear a suspicious character.
Any other woman would have been pained and horrified at such a
discovery, but she found the strange consolation in it that her
handsome adorer promised also to become a very interesting object for
pursuit, and so she began systematically to watch the man who lay
unsuspectingly at her feet.
She soon found out that he was no conspirator; but she asked herself in
vain whether she was to look for a common swindler, an impudent
adventurer, or perhaps even a criminal in him. The day that she had
foreseen soon came; the Brazilian's banker "unaccountably" had omitted
to send him any money, and so he borrowed some of her. "So he is a male
courtesan," she said to herself. The handsome man soon required money
again, and she lent it to him again. Then at last he left suddenly and
nobody knew where he had gone to; only this much, that he had left
Vevey as the companion of an old but wealthy Wallachian lady. So this
time clever Wanda was duped.
A year afterward she met the Brazilian unexpectedly at Lucca, with an
insipid-looking, light-haired, thin Englishwoman on his arm. Wanda
stood still and looked at him steadily, but he glanced at her quite
indifferently; he did not choose to know her again.
The next morning, however, his valet brought her a letter from him,
which contained the amount of his debt in Italian hundred-lire notes,
accompanied by a very cool excuse. Wanda was satisfied, but she wished
to find out who the lady was, in whose company she constantly saw Don
Escovedo.
"Don Escovedo."
An Austrian count, who had a loud and silly laugh, said:
"Who has saddled you with that yarn? The lady is Lady Nitingsdale, and
his name is Romanesco."
"Romanesco?"
"Yes, he is a rich Boyar from Moldavia, where he has extensive estates."
Romanesco ran a faro bank in his apartments, and certainly cheated, for
he nearly always won; it was not long, therefore, before other people
in good society at Lucca shared Madame von Chabert's suspicions, and,
consequently, Romanesco thought it advisable to vanish as suddenly from
Lucca as Escovedo had done from Vevey, and without leaving any more
traces behind him.
Some time afterward, Madame von Chabert was on the Island of
Heligoland, for the sea-bathing; and one day she saw Escovedo-Romanesco
sitting opposite to her at the table d'hote, in very animated
conversation with a Russian lady; only his hair had turned black since
she had seen him last. Evidently his light hair had become too
compromising for him.
"The sea-water seems to have a very remarkable effect upon your hair,"
Wanda said to him spitefully, in a whisper.
"Do you think so?" he replied, condescendingly.
"I fancy that at one time your hair was fair."
"You are mistaking me for somebody else," the Brazilian replied,
quietly.
"I am not."
"For whom do you take me, pray?" he said with an insolent smile.
"For Don Escovedo."
"I am Count Dembizki from Valkynia," the former Brazilian said with a
bow; "perhaps you would like to see my passport."
"Well, perhaps--"
And he had the impudence to show her his false passport.
A year afterward Wanda met Count Dembizki in Baden, near Vienna. His
hair was still black, but he had a magnificent, full, black beard; he
had become a Greek prince, and his name was Anastasio Maurokordatos.
She met him once in one of the side walks in the park, where he could
not avoid her. "If it goes on like this," she called out to him in a
mocking voice, "the next time I see you, you will be king, of some
negro tribe or other."
That time, however, the Brazilian did not deny his identity; on the
contrary, he surrendered at discretion, and implored her not to betray
him. As she was not revengeful she pardoned him, after enjoying his
terror for a time, and promised him that she would hold her tongue, as
long as he did nothing contrary to the laws.
"First of all, I must beg you not to gamble."
"You have only to command; and we do not know each other in the future."
"I must certainly insist on that," she said maliciously.
The "Exotic Prince" had, however, made a conquest of the charming
daughter of a wealthy Austrian count, and had cut out an excellent
young officer, who was wooing her. The latter, in his despair, began to
make love to Frau von Chabert, and at last told her he loved her. But
she only laughed at him.
"You are very cruel," he stammered in confusion.
"I? What are you thinking about?" Wanda replied, still smiling; "all I
mean is that you have directed your love to the wrong address, for
Countess--"
"Do not speak of her; she is engaged to another man."
"As long as I choose to permit it," she said; "but what will you do if
I bring her back to your arms? Will you still call me cruel?"
"Can you do this?" the young officer asked, in great excitement.
"Well, supposing I can do it, what shall I be then?"
"An angel, whom I shall thank on my knees."
A few days later, the rivals met at a coffee-house; the Greek prince
began to lie and boast, and the Austrian officer gave him the lie
direct. In consequence, it was arranged that they should fight a duel
with pistols next morning in a wood close to Baden. But as the officer
was leaving the house with his seconds the next morning, a Police
Commissary came up to him and begged him not to trouble himself any
further about the matter, but another time to be more careful before
accepting a challenge.
"What does it mean?" the officer asked, in some surprise.
"It means that this Maurokordatos is a dangerous swindler and
adventurer, whom we have just taken into custody."
"He is not a prince?"
"No; a circus rider."
An hour later, the officer received a letter from the charming
Countess, in which she humbly begged for pardon. The happy lover set
off to go and see her immediately, but on the way a sudden thought
struck him, and so he turned back in order to thank beautiful Wanda, as
he had promised, on his knees.