ANOTHER DE ROUGEMONT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 2, 12 January 1899, Page 3

ANOTHER DE ROUGEMONT.

THE WIDE WORLD MAGAZINE BITTEN AGAIN. The man who makes a sheep of himself will usually find plenty of people ready to shear him. The adventurer Grien (alias Be Rougemont) shore the editor of the Wide World Magazine pretty close to the ukra. And now .another champion fibster has come along ami shaved what was left. The new Munchausen sails under the high-sound n/ Italian tile of Baron Oarvo— which, beine interpreted, mean*. Baron Crow. The .wi-dimnt Baron caws out a melancholy and (»n the face of it) highly improbable tale. But he knew his man The e.Utor of the Wild Word Magazine (I think that is a suitable title) is a prince of gobemonches, for he heads flourish-— ° Wa ' Baron s tale with the following approving i ' Bar o" Cor yo's fearful experiences described in minute detail by himself, and illustrated with drawings done under his own supervision. If credulity is an error of weak minds that editor's brainmatter must be very poorly indeed. He has evidently not learned caution from the manner in which his finger* were burned by that enterprising son of Ananias, yclept Louis de Rougemont Lhe tearful experiences ' of De Rougemont's latest rival are gruesome enough, in all reason. According to his own showing, the newly-created 'Baron' was, somewhere in the eighties, a 1100 qJ 1 ' womaui3h y° uth — a sort of hysterical Mr. Clayton ' Who lived on curds and whey, And daily sang their praises, And then he'd go and play, With buttercups and daisies.' Corvo tells how he was dismissed from a Franciscan monastery m Rome, at midnight, eimply because he 'had no vocation' He then attached himself to a certain ' Dowager Duchess Sforza ' and lived at her palace in an unspecified locality. The hypersensitive, hothouse Corvo narrates likewise how the sight of a few frcs innocently hopping on a garden path very Dearly deprived him of reason and life. One day, says he, a small lizard ' lumped up my left sleeve. He— not the lizaid, but the ' Baron '—forthwith fell !^i i Snnmd-'to all appearance died, was duly 'waked,' had a black Mass celebrated for him, and was buried in a loadus in the Dowager s private chapel, at a height of 25 feot above the floor Ihe doctors had sadly blundered. For poor Corvo was keenly alive and conscious all through, but alack ! quite incapable of motion However, he moved at last, and to some purpose. Despite his lengthened hist, weakly state, and long deprivation of air Corvo burst his coinn in p eces in a v f ry brief space, tore the lit] thereof to tatters, and, after performing a remarkable acrobatic feat descended from his narrow and precarious porch by the aid of a rope placed in a peculiarly awkward position for the purposes of the story, marched back to the Dowager at midnisrhc in remarkably good health, ' escaped ' with her to Spezzia, and ' went with her for a little yachting tour.' Only the ding-rling-ding-a-long of the wedding-bells was wanting to make the story complete The adventurous 'Baron' had not stuffed hi, brain-colls with sufficient of that

' TbTnS'Sf ' W i hiCh ? afc - UU 56'5 6 ' kind ' indal ?ent parent, gave 10 supply the place of wißdom to the knave ' ■wail in ♦>, firSt aSt e the title ' ' ljaron C( '"o-' No such tit eh known iCethel ?f)o^t stock companies for schemes of hs 0 fe t Altogether the 'Baron' is a jewel. And the Wide Wo, ld Maoatmhas been getting into very queer company of late. Ma 9^^c