A CHEQUERED CAREER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9022, 29 October 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CHEQUERED CAREER.

There has just died atNocera, in Italy, one Carlo Cailero, whose story is strange enough for romance. Cafiero was born at Barletto. His father was a millionaire, and young Carlo received an excellent education. In his early days ho led a free life, but in his sixtieth year he came to England, and having made tho acquaintance of Karl Marx, gained some knowledge of the condition of the poor and joined the ranks of the Socialists. Ho then returned to Italy, and set himself tho task of improving the condition of the Italian workingman. He founded in Naples tho Campana, the first workwoman's newspapor printed in Italy. When dissensions arose in the International Workmen's Association betweon the Socialists and the Anarchists ho left Karl Marx and joined Bakounin, and was proclaimed one of tho chiefs of tho International Association. He established a secret Socialist society, and kept up for a long time a close intimacy with Bakounin, whose pecuniary needs in bettering tho condition of tho working classes found ample satisfaction from Cafioro's purse. Bakounin in return provided him with a wife. The marriage which Cafiero contracted was a peculiar one. His wifo was the young Nihilist Olympiad© Kutusoff, and they were married in a free town in Austria, only two days after they had met for tho first time. This marriage procured for Olympiade an Italian status, and saved her from being delivered up to tho Russian authorities as a Russian subject. Half an hour after the marriage ceremony they parted company, and did not see each other again for ten years. In his seventieth year Cafiero wandered from one Italian prison to another, till he was forced to leave the country. At Genoa he became familiar with the works of Rousseau, and tho Geneva philosopher's " Revenous a la Nature" had such an effect upon his mind that ho determined to lead a life of isolation, as being the summum bonum of human happiness. It is nob surprising that in the end his mind became unhinged, and that he had to bo placed in a maison-de-santS. As soon as Olympiade Kutusoff heard of what hud happened to her "husband" she hastened to Boulogne to remove him from his confinement, and succeeded in obtaining his roloaso. Bub after two years of patient ministrations she was obliged to place him again under stricter control, and it was while undergoing this restraint that he died.