t is removed and burned. In the course of time (about two
months) he fully recovered from that serious leg affliction from which
he stated he had been suffering since the age of nineteen.

When an attempt was made to obtain his past history it was soon
discovered that it was so fantastically colored with fabrications as
to be entirely worthless, so far as a reliable account of his past
life is concerned. As an instance of pathological lying, however, it
was a masterpiece. He was requested to write out briefly his past life
history, and in this abbreviated form it covered twelve
closely-typewritten pages. We will not burden the reader with a
complete reproduction of his story, although I assure you it makes
very interesting reading material, but will simply review it briefly.

He speaks of the confession made to him several years ago by the lady
whom he had always looked up to as his mother. She told him that she
was only his foster-mother, and that in reality he was the son of the
Austrian chamberlain and a famous countess. The latter turned him over
into this lady's care when he was quite young, following her divorce
from the chamberlain. She furnished him with the authenticated proof
of the fact that he was entitled to a fabulous fortune left by his
parents. Unfortunately the lady died after a brief illness, during
which he practically sacrificed his life to save her, and thus his
most important witness is forever inaccessible. The papers which could
readily prove his noble descent were, most unfortunately, taken from
him when he was arrested and are probably destroyed by this time.

His foster-mother, he states, was regularly supplied with funds by his
real mother, gave him an excellent education and traveled with him
extensively. In a plea for clemency he dwells upon the fact that his
father died insane, that he himself suffered from epilepsy in his
youth, and that at the age of twenty he spent a year in an insane
asylum in Austria.

As an instance of his tendency to dramatization, of the part his ego
plays in the recital of his past exploits and of the tendency to crave
sympathy and compassion, a characteristic quite common to these
pathological swindlers, the following, his own description of the
circumstances which brought about his admission to the Vienna Insane
Asylum may be quoted:--

"While on vacation, I met at Wertersee, which is a fashionable