WHO IS HE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 24, 9 October 1885, Page 16

WH O IS HE.

(Bombay Catholic Examiner.')

A KO9E by any other name would smell as sweet. So, too. whatever be the true Christian name and patronymic of a certain individual now lodged in gaol .it Cochi-i there can be no doubt that he is a sinsu'ar personage. Whon the so-calli d Father St. Victor Kanovics, th° man of miny titles aud varied parent a go, chatted familiarly with us about four months ago he couid hanily have anticipated what we ourselves never dieauaed of for a moment, n imely, that he would in a very short time monopolize no sm ill thare of the interest of the Indian 'police. Had he then known what .snares and pitfalls awai'ed him in the course of his tour through India, we think be would have betaken himself h«'nco in one of hia many disguises instead of plunging so desperately .is he has do'ie into the toils prepared for him by the police. We have no desire to travel over the same mound as the Bombay Gazette, which Ins faithfully and harmoniously ctuonicled the adventures of the so-called Kanovics, from the time (hit he began to he a public character, if, indeed, a man wiio -A^ars other names than those he is entitled to by baptism and mheiitance can be said to have a character at all. It will be seen from what the writer in tho Bombay Gazette that the theory promises to be substantiate 1. At' all events it is not likely to be disproved by anything that Kanovics has at anytime said or omitted to t-ay. Besides the question as to who the pretender now in durance vile may be, there is another that must ultimately be settled. If tbr present wearer of the name of Kanovics be Olivier Pain, svh.it has become of the rightful possessor of the name ? For there has bien a real Kanovics, who is known to have been confine 1 for some months in a Hungarian asylum as a kleptomaniac aud to have subsequently been tuin"d loose upon the wide wide woildto shift for himself. Tne la«-t thing known of him is that his lvlatio: s put him over the Austrian frontier with his face towards Constantinople, little expecting that he would -ome day render his family illustrious throughout the East, p-rhaps throughout the world. Now, if we accept the theory that it was Oliver Pam whom we saw in the fles-h, the question naturally aii«es. What on eartu has become of Kanovics 'I We must suppose that he met Olivier Pain somewhere or other in the land of the Pharaohs. Did the latter then filch from him his good name to trade with in other couutiies. or did the simple Hungarian dispose of his name for a consideration ? In whatever manner the transfer took placs it seems to have been lacking in completeness or preciseness. If Olivier Pain, really made off with the man's name he must have forgotten to take his parentage and pedigree with it. We do not incline to that theory. however, but we prefer the other, namely, that the adventurer who lately introduced himself to us, must have become more or less acquainted with the antecedents of the real Kanovics and endeavoured to make URe of what he considered to be authentic facts. The man who made dupes of others every day till

he got to the end of bis tether at Cochin is no fool, and in dealing with the Austrian Consul in Bombay we do not believe that he would have deliberately told what he knew to be a cock-and-bull story so far as the real Kanovics was concerned. He could not have known of the latter's ignominious ejection from his native country, and it is probable that some . f of bis accounts of his aristocratic connections were not pure inventions so much as misdirected efforts to maintain the character of Kanovics with all its attributes and appendages. It appears extremely probable that he met the expelled kleptomaniac in some obscure corner of E^ypt, and believed the exile's boast regarding his high connections. Considering that our adventurer has not had the courage to state the real object of hiß visit to India, it is clear that, were he Kanovics in fact, he would rather wish to be known by some other name. At present he is in the unpleasant predicament of finding himself strongly suspected to be Olivier Pain ; yet he does not attempt to cut the ground from under the feet of his adversaries by confessing himself to be Kanovics, the son of a humble pensioned railway employe. The consequences of such an admission of imposture could hardly be so grave as those which must ensue £rom identification with Olivier Pain. What he thought his trump card has failed, and he evidently has no other card to play.

Our distinguished visitor of last May might perhaps have contrived, aided by his wonderful powers of invention and deception, to make a good thing of his trip to India, whatever the object of it may have been. Unfortunately for himself, however, he insisted on his retaining his dual character of Kanovics and a Catholic priest. His assumption of the latter had meanwhile been denounced as an imposture, and be could not make head against what he called the unjust persecution of the Catholic clergy in India. Meanwhile the Austrian Consul at Bombay bad telegraphed to Vienna, and received an account of the unromantic Kanovics, the kleptomaniac. The result was that the police ranged themselves on the side of the persecutors of the harmless globe-trotter, and the missionary bound for Manchuria found the authorities in Southern India seized with an insatiable desire to know what business he had in India. He could not gratity them on this point, but continued his desperate efforts to prove his identity with his ideal Kanovics. In the meantime photography, which, like the electric telegraph, is abhorred of impostors and the criminal clashes generally, having been invented partly for their confusion, had been brought to bear upon the mystery which shrouded the personality of the reputed Kanovics. Mr. Superintendent Macdermott, of the Bombay Police, had all his suspicions confirmed by a comparison of photographs of the celebrated Communist and the Reformed Barnabite. There happened to be two men in India, besides the self-styled Kanovics, who have met the redoubtable Olivier in Egypt. One of these immediately recognised Olivier Pain in two pbotosjof Kanovics in Arab guise, while the other is not disposed to be communicative on the subject.

We shall leave our Reformed Barnabite to settle the question of his identity with the police and the magistrates of Cochin, merely noticing a few striking circumstances in connection with his appearance and his cross-examination. One of the means of detecting Olivier Pain in his Arab disgui-e, rioticed by the British authorities in Egypt, was the colour of his ejes. Now, when Kanovics was in the Fort Chapel loquaciously recounting his adventures, it was suggested to him that an Arab di?guise would be of doubtful service to a man who eyes were of such a tell-tale colour as blue. In those days Kar.ovics still retained his faculty of giving an answer, good, bad or indifferent, to every question that could be put to him. So he met the poser above iccorded by saying that theie is a blue-eyed tribe of Arabs, the puiest-bloodcd of the race, dwelling somewhere in the centre of Arabia. As none of his hearers had been there to see, they were obliged to accept his statement. He was also fond of mentioning that his legs still retained traces of the tortures to which he had been subjected in Central America. They had been burned with slow matches and otherwis > expenmented upon. If Kanovics be Olivier Pain, indeed, then some of the lemarks he made in the course of his cross-examination at Cochin aic exquisitely humorous. Take for instance his reference to Lord Wolseley as '• the greatest field-maishal of this day."' This fiom the lips of the man who out-man<xuvered him would b 2 keenly saicastic. His explanation of his acquaintance with Olivier Pain looks like nn heroic attempt to tell the truth without bctiaying himself. He says — "'I never fahook hands with him —standing face to face. I never saw him from a distance. I saw him close to me veiy many times." Fancy a man shaking hands with him-elf. standing face to face, or seeing himself fiom a distance ?