Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846

Birbone II

Coco

– "Adspice quantâ

Voce negat quæ sit ficti constantia vultûs!" – Juv. Sat. vii.

We cut our pen afresh to say a few words concerning that arch-impostor, that "Fourbum imperator," Coco the coiner. Had it not been for the prosperity of the St Angelo ministry at Naples, that three-headed Cerberus of iniquity, of whom the people,

"Tre Angeli a noi più recan dannoChe trenta orrendi Demoni non fanno,"

had it not been that their success seemed to militate against such an inference, we might have supposed that Coco, poor, starving, and in utter disesteem, had been thus let to live, to prove by a sad contrast the truth of the old adage – that "honesty is the best policy." Coco is the very impersonation of wiliness and subtlety – a fox amongst foxes – the Metternich of his craft; – he has cheated every dealer in turn, and by turns has learnt to know the internal arrangements of every prison throughout the kingdom. By sheer force of talent he has been able, like Napoleon, to maintain his cause single-handed against a host of rivals who would crush him, and cannot; and, whenever he is not closeted elsewhere, he is either holding a privy council with St Angelo, or transacting busines with his Serene Highness of Salerno, against whom (par parenthese) we have not a word to say. Cicero's oration for Milo is not better than Coco's oration for Coco; and to hear him plead it personally for the first time, is certainly entertaining. He seems to have taken that oration for his model, setting out, as Tully for that client did, with a staunch negation of the charges alleged against him; but embarrassed, as he proceeds in his harangue, to maintain himself strictly honest, he gradually throws off reserve, converts your room into a court of justice, and, confronting imaginary accusers, endeavours to shake their testimony by making out that they are just as great rogues as himself! "Coco! say over again just half a dozen of those sentences– you know where to begin – that you have so often been the habit of indulging me with; not the whole speech, Coco, if you please." "Eccelenza, no! I was saying, then, that I was in advance of my age, and that, if I had been born in France or England in place of Naples, I should not now have been called Coco the cheat, the thief, the birbone, but Sir Coco – or Monsieur le Marquis de Cocon. Look at the things I have done, sir, and see what they have done for me. No sooner have I devised some new galanteria– elegant, classical, and sure to take – when it is enough to whisper 'Coco's,' to bring it into discredit: a great outcry is raised against me as its author, and, like a second Galileo, I am cast into prison! Knowledge is not power at Naples; for my countrymen know that I have knowledge enough when I mulct their ignorance, as I sometimes do. It is too much knowledge that has brought me into all my scrapes and difficulties! Do you doubt it, signor? Why, then, was I first sent to prison? – why, but because my mint was frequently preferred to that of his majesty here, and he feared lest my Ferdinands should drive his Ferdinands out of the market! Had I done the same in England, I suppose they would, on discovering my talent, have made me master of their mint, in place of sending me to expiate my offence in a dungeon —basta about that affair! – but when I had given up making Ferdinands, and took to minting Domitians, what business was that to the King of Naples, I wonder, unless indeed I had put his name to that tyrant's head? Yet he sent me a second time to prison for it, notwithstanding for which in return I have taken the liberty of sending him to a warmer place. See, here's a pretty baioccho – Ferdinand's head on one side, and a 'concordia-Augustorum' on the other, where the devil and he are holding hands over a lighted altar, he wanting to withdraw his hand, – but the devil's clutch is too tight for that! – whilst a little imp is putting a bit of live coal into his palm, and another is doing the same under his right foot! For four elegant horses in bronze, of which I forgot the age, and sold them to St Angelo as antiques, I was sent to prison again, and a third time. Though, when it suited him last year to sell off certain old horseflesh that had been many years on his hands as young, his purchaser of course got no redress. Out upon that old Birbone! with his galleries, his harems, and his horses; – but he eats too much, and is never well, – a great consolation to me, who might else have repined at his successes; but when I compare my health with his, I bless the good St Januario who keeps me poor! Again, I ought to be grateful to our good Saint that, though men may pretend that I lie and cheat, (which perhaps I do a little,) you never heard any body say of me, what all the world says of HIM, that I am cruel, —mai, you never heard that; and if I make money occasionally in some way that it don't sound well to speak of, what then? I never hoard it up, the lottery office is my banker, and it circulates again presently. And as to cheating, if we look it boldly in the face, and see in what company we cheat, why should I be ashamed of what all the world does here from King Ferdinand, to Beppo Tuzzi of the Mergellina? Didn't Ferdinand try hard to cheat you last year in the sulphur question? and would he not have succeeded, too, unless you had thought of mixing up the sulphur with some nitre and charcoal, and of converting it into a question of gunpowder!" "That's true, Coco! and now tell us of your last device for raising the wind." "Here it is," and Coco has presented us with a small opaque lachrymatory, glistening all over in the exquisite irridescence of old glass. "Was it not beautiful?" he enquired. "Yes; and ancient as well," replied we; "the decomposition of the glass showed that, and the elegant and classical form of the vessel showed it too." "Well! he would manufacture just such another before us, if we would like to see it done!" "Comè? we should be delighted!" "Dunque e fatto subito, now that I have shown how it is to be effected – just as when that great sea-captain, quel famoso Cristoforo Colombo" – "Yes, yes! Coco, never mind about him just now." "Ah, your excellency, I perceive, knows the story! Well, here you see is a small clay vessel moulded from the antique; here a small packet which I untie; and here a little gum-water in a phial." We require no other materials – a child might do the rest. In the packet now open, we remark a quantity of a beautiful, many-coloured glass-dust, in the midst of which appear thousands of filmy flakes that have been scraped off from the sides of old lachrymatories, and present every hue of colour. In a twinkling Coco has gummed the vessel all over, and in less than a minute he has rolled round its sides a rainbow robe of the most rich and glowing colours, while not a speck of clay remains visible by which to make out the fraud! "Eccolo!" says he, placing the beautiful fabrication in our hand; "Eccolo! do you think that for such a work as that I ought to have been sent for the twentieth time to prison?" Fearful of having our moral sense dazzled by the glass into making some indiscreet admission, we now change the theme. We had heard that morning a good story; it was "the case of Coco versus Casanuova," in which the cleverness of the former rogue had prevailed against his equally astute rival, who had himself been so obliging as to favour us with the full particulars thereof, in words like the following: – "Coco – (you know Coco?") – (Coco and I smiled, for we knew each other perfectly,) – "Well, he presents himself one day before me in a shop in the Piazza degli Orefici, bringing in a coin in his hand, which he throws down carelessly on the counter, asking me what price he should put upon it? On taking it up, I see 'Υελιων,' which, with the common type of the Velian Lion, as we all know, vale poco; but, in place of a lion, this had the Athenian diota (or two-eared amphora) upon the field of the reverse. Knowing that the rogue was eyeing me to see how I liked it, in order that he might charge for it accordingly, I asked him doubtingly whether he was quite sure it was genuine, (entertaining no doubt on that subject myself.) 'Rather an ingenious question for a profound connossieur like Casanuova, to put to a poor devil who has the good fortune for once in his life to buy something good. You have no doubt about it; but if you say you have, I will take it to Tuzzi, and get his opinion first.' Fearing to lose it if he did, I confessed that I believed it genuine, and then asked him his price. 'He had refused fifty; we might have it at seventy dollars.' Of course I 'was astonished,' and offered 'forty – Would that do?' No! honest men had but one price; seventy he had said – seventy, he repeated, was the price.' I bought it, and paid for it and took it home, and consulted my books, and there there was no such type to be seen – learned friends who called upon me had never seen its fellow – it was pronounced an inedited coin, as indeed it turned out afterwards to be! The annual meeting of our archæological society was at hand. I determined to memorialize my coin, and to read my memoir at the meeting. In three weeks I had finished my labours. There were some striking conjectures in the paper, which I went early to deliver. We had waited half an hour for the Prince St Georgio. At last he came. 'Look!' said I, putting the coin into his hands, (and I said not a word beyond this.) Mightily pleased he seemed with it at once, looking from me to it and from it to me. I thought he was going to propose for it. At last he spoke – it was but a word; but his emphasis and accent made my ears tingle. 'Excellent!' said he; but I was reassured on hearing him add, 'Casanuova has the luck of St Angelo, and nobody ever took him in.' Relieved by this announcement, I could now afford to be modest, and said it was but by accident that I had first seen the coin. 'Not first, Casanuova," said the prince – 'but second, I believe. I saw it first.' 'You!' said I, aghast; 'you saw this coin, and did not buy it?' 'Costava! it cost too much; besides, to tell you the truth, Coco, who had just made it, told me it was expressly intended for the cabinet of quel dottissimo suo amico J. Battista Casanuova.'" "'Tis all true," said Coco, rubbing his hands; "and I believe I can do almost any thing I like with any of them." "Except not to tell lies, and not to impose upon antiquaries?" "Caro lei! these are the very things I like to do most, and do accordingly."

"What has become of Coco?" asked we of an orefice, three years later, on finding ourselves a second time in Naples, and nothing doubting, as he had not been to visit us, that he was doing Baron Trenck, and exercising his ingenuity in prison. We were surprised, therefore, to learn that he now kept a smart shop, and was a sort of joint householder with a respectable man, and that nothing particular had occurred to tarnish his reputation for now nearly a year! The shop we had already noticed as one of promise on the outside; for, as yet, we had not found time to visit its interior. It stood half-way up the Toledo, on the left hand side as you go to the Studii. Etruscan jars were painted on all the shutters, and bits of statues and bas-reliefs bossaged and projected from the house front. In face of each window was an enormous shelving tray, full of all sorts of odds and ends, from the Flood downwards, the whole under protection of a strong iron grillage. In one corner of the shop (we had now gone forth to visit it) sat a pretty young woman, in spectacles, reading Manzoni, or sleeping over him (the aforesaid spectacles prevented our noticing which) as he lay open in her lap; while on another chair, in the opposite corner, an old man, almost in his dotage, looked wistfully round his shop, not suppressing an anxious sigh when the scrutiny was done. In an inner room of his palace – for such, in derision of its owner, was the house called – busy in preparing and cleaning the specimens that were about to be transferred into the shop, lurked, like some keen-eyed tarantula, the industrious Coco himself, with such an eye to business, and such an ear, that we were no sooner turned in from the street than he, too, had turned in, and was beside us. – "Well, Coco, bon giorrio, &c. &c. &c., 'tis said you have become an honest man at last; how does this new trade answer?" "Not at all," sighed the old man behind us. "Nonsense!" rejoined Coco; "whoever heard of a man's making money all at once? Nothing stake, nothing make – there's no mending where there's no spending. 'Necesse est facere sumptum qui quærit lucrum, dice bene il Plauto.'" "Allegro though you be, Coco, I am not. With you nothing can go ill, for you have nothing to lose, either in money or in character; but to me, who am old, bankruptcy and a prison are not matters of jest." "Nonsense, again, you are not going to prison yet!" "Not at all, I hope, Coco," said the poor little lazy woman in the corner. "If I had my 5000 ducats, and my vineyard, again, at Sorrento, that you persuaded me to sell for your Scavi at Calvi, which never brought me any thing but a few lamps, and lots of lachrymatories!" "Basta, 'tis too late to talk about what you would do if you had it to do over again. Let bygones be bygones. Who knows what this gentleman may come to buy of us? and he never would have come to you but from his previous acquaintance with me. Isn't it so, sir? Ah, there are some pretty things there," continued he, following our eyes into a placarded recess. "Antichi Sono?" and we look into his face; "I'd as lief sell my own flesh and blood, as any thing here that was not. Think, sir, of my position. I am the responsible head of this firm. That good old gentleman, having begun antiquities late in life, does not know much about them. The signora there has taste, plenty; but it is not a lady's business to know the prices of things she may value or take an interest in; for suppose, now, she should wish to make money by the sale of Coco, she would hardly know what to ask for him." The old man fidgeted; Coco shot a glance at the blue spectacles, which were raised at this sally. But the signora, who sat behind them, said nothing. "Whence came these same things?" we inquire, for on going close up to them, they seemed not unfamiliar to us. Before Coco could coin the forthcoming lie, the old man had told us whence they came. "From Baroni's shop!" adding that they had cost 700 ducats. This confirmed the story we had heard from the beginning to its end. Our clever scoundrel had contrived, it seems, to engage the old man in a speculative excavation at Calvi; from which a few lachrymatories turning up, the old man's cupidity was excited; and, on the false representations made to him by Coco, he sold his estate; left the country; and hiring the expensive shop in which we see him, leaves Coco to stock it! which he does by the purchase of such merchandise as his friends have to dispose of – "When," says he, "they don't sell them too dear!" The old man admits that his employer is very clever; but says quietly, that he has not much fiducia in his honesty. Coco says, on his side, that his employer is mean in his conduct towards him, and pays his activity and zeal in a very niggardly manner. Thus neither is satisfied with the other. Meantime the public are saying, that in less than a year the shop will be again for sale; that Coco will have bolted; and that the old man, if he be alive, will be fretting his soul out in St Elmo! Nobody speculates upon what is to become of the lady with the blue spectacles. We predict, that should she be alive, and the old man dead, in the course of another year, she will have entirely given up her taste for things old and curious, and have become curious to try something new and comely; if, indeed, Coco shall have left her any money to indulge in such a fancy.

On returning from this visit to our hotel, about an hour later, we found Coco under the gateway, and on the look-out for us. More solito, he had something to show us. The porter looked after us inquiringly, as we bid him follow up-stairs; but was surprised by a counter look, and by our calling him by his name. Even on the stairs, he could not forbear sundry short ejaculations, by way of preparing us for what we were to see presently. "Ah! ché bella roba! Ah, what flowers of the mint I have brought you to see to-day! – bought for a song – at three Carlini a-piece! You shall have them at three and a half – I content myself with small gains. But you, sir, who are discreet, and know the value of these things, shall judge whether I have told you a falsehood or no." By this time we were in our room. The dirty bag was untied; and there leaped out of it, not indeed a cat, but a large heap of consular coins, with which we seemed forthwith to be vastly familiar; and no wonder; since, on inspecting them, we found that the whole had been ours not twelve hours before, we having disposed of them to a refiner for their weight in silver, to melt. "Take them all, sir, tutti quanti, at three Carlines and a half a-piece." "No; nor yet for two Carlines, Coco," said we, putting the paper from us. Upon which the cunning fellow hoped he had not been taken in; having certainly purchased them in the persuasion of reselling them, as a catch, to us. "The Italian marquis, of whom he had bought them, assured him, on his honour, that he had made a rare bargain with him." "Are the coins your own, Coco?" "To my cost are they, signor, unless you re-purchase them." "I sold them only this morning, Coco, for the weight of the silver; you must try somebody else." Upon which Coco, with admirable presence of mind, replaced them in his bag, and said "he had made a mistake!" "We regretted that he had not purchased them from us at the rate of one Carline and a-half per piece; in place of having been duped into paying three and a-half." Though he saw plainly, from our manner, that we were aware of his roguery, he was not put out; but shrugging his shoulders, and twitching the angles of a mouth remarkable for its mobility, he merely said – "Pazienza! a bargain's a bargain; we grow wiser as we grow older," and speedily withdrew.

Birbone III

Basseggio

"Unde habeas quærit nemo, sed oportet habere."

"Fidarsi e bene, ma non fidarsi e meglio." —Italian Proverb.

Near a fountain in one of the main streets of the west end of Rome, in which a recumbent figure bends over his ever-gushing urn; his body half hid from sight, and slowly dissolving in the water, under protection of a dimly lit shrine of a gaily painted Madonna; a tarnished brass plate with the word B – engraved thereon, is inserted into the panels of a dingy-looking door, out of which a long piece of dirty string dangles through a hole. If you touch the electric cord, the shock is instantly transmitted to the other end, and the importunate tinkling of a well-hung bell is responded to by a clicking of the latch, when an invisible arm pulls back the door, and your entrance is secured into a passage encumbered with broken busts and bas-reliefs, tier above tier, and a series of marble tablets, with Dis manibus inscriptions, let into the wall on either side. If, now, you pick your way amid the many stumbling-blocks that beset it, till you have reached the stair, (a narrow stair and dark, and encumbered like the passage, with numerous relics of antiquity,) a female voice, loudly shrilling from above, demands your business – "Chi c'e?" – you answer of course "Amico," and are bid to mount accordingly. Arrived at the summit of the stair, that same voice, the high-pitched key of which startled you from below, sounds less disagreeable, now that you are close beside the fair proprietress of it, who at once greets you affably, begs you to be seated, has seated herself beside you, and, premising that her "marito" will appear anon, has begun to ask you a hundred questions, some of which you are relieved from answering by the actual advent of Signor B – , who makes his politest bow, while Madame introduces you as an old acquaintance. You see at a glance this part of Signor B – 's history, that he has bought a young and pretty wife out of many years' traffic in antiquities. Whatever else he may at any other time have purchased, was with intention to dispose of afterwards, a suitable opportunity offering. But this pretty wife he keeps like an inedited coin, or fancies that he keeps to himself entirely. Few antiquaries have shown more enterprise than B – . Possessed of little, very little money in his youth, he did not, like many other Roman youths of this day, squander it away in cigars, and was under twenty when he undertook his first commercial expedition. He went into Egypt, could not buy the Pyramids, they were too large for his portmanteau; then into Greece; then to Sicily. He sailed to Syracuse, landed at Naxos, sacked Taormina and Catania; came back and sold his curiosities well; went abroad again, and again returned like an industrious bee laden with spoils. Enriched at length by these numerous journeys, he was able to purchase a vineyard, and to plant it. His next step was to build a villa upon it, and to marry an ancient dame, who, dying shortly, left him at liberty to marry again. The lady whom he now calls his own being at the time poor, his treasures soon won her heart, while his house flattered her ambition, and so they made a match of it; and she now accompanies him in most of his antiquarian prowling excursions during the summer; and the ménage, on the whole, for an Italian ménage, goes on well enough.

One day – (this was when, by much frequentation of the premises, we had become intimate with its inmates) – one day we had just been ringing an Etruscan vase, and liked the sound thereof; and examining the painting, we liked that too; and therefore, agreeing as to price, completed the purchase, and were sitting between old husband and young wife, round a brazier mounted on an ancient tripod, with a handful of gems, loculis quæ custoditur eburnis, talking carelessly, and taking our impressions of them, and of the stones, as we talked. It was a fête day, and, now we came to notice it, Madame B – was en grande toilette, and had been hearing Padre S – preach, as she informed us, at St Carlo's in the Corso. When she heard we had not been there, she sighed for our sakes – "Our friend should have heard Padre S – to-day, is it not so?" to her husband, who assented to this good opinion of the Padre: "It was such a good sermon! all about doing as you would be done by – no loophole for a self-deceiver to escape by. I only wish A – had been there to hear it." "Bagatello!" said Signor B – , stirring the brazier, "Do you think he would not have cheated Lord V – just the same in this head of Medusa, which he palmed off upon him for an antique, knowing it was a Calandrelli? Good sermons are thrown away upon some people." "Well," sighed the lady, looking up to the ceiling, and then taking a second dose of it – "well, at least we may apply it to ourselves." "Not a bit of it. We never apply any thing to ourselves. Do you think, for instance, when I married you, I sought to mate me with a lark, or a nightingale —risponde." She had no difficulty in doing so. "And was I not a lark till my poor sister died —poverella– eighteen months ago?" "Si, Signora! but since that time you treat me with coldness; are always looking up to the sky; and always telling me your soul is with her soul in Paradise. No Paradise for me! What think you, sir?" "We always sided with those who were suffering from the loss of friends." "Bene, bene, for three months or so – 'twas all very well, natural. But beyond this? Besides, though it were ever so sincere – what was the use of it?" "Oh! of no use, of course," said we. "I shall never give over mourning for her, I promise you that," said the lady, much moved. The husband shrugged his shoulders; said, "That all women were more or less foolish;" and asked us if we were married? Before we had time to answer, in came Padre S – , whose sermon had made such impression on B – and his wife. We now sit all around the brazier; both wife and husband being, for some time, loud in their praises, which were somewhat extravagant! "It was a divine sermon – St Paul could not have preached a better" – when the good man hopes it may, by God's blessing, do good, politely acknowledges the compliment implied in our regrets that we had not been of the auditory, and then rises to look round, Signor B – doing the honours, at the curiosities of the shop; at the sight of several objects of virtù, he expresses, somewhat naïvely, great pleasure – would like to have seen more, but has another sermon to deliver in St Jacomo – the bell is ringing! – he must say idio at once. As he makes his exit, (Madame kisses his hand first,) two other visitors present themselves; the one a young Roman, who comes to console her; the other a young English nobleman, who comes to buy in haste, and will have to repent at leisure afterwards. In five minutes, Madame seems to have entirely forgotten her sister; B – his wife! The one is receiving comfort in compliment; the other, in cash! Hush! Surely we heard Lord A – ask if that vamped old vase, which will fall some day to pieces, was antique; and B – assert that it was! Why, the paint is scarcely dry on its sides! Lord A – 's unlucky eye lights upon a bust, which, when he gets it over to England, he may match at the stone-mason's in the New Road, and at half-price —two words, three syllables, and the purchase is made "Chi?" Whose bust is it? "Cicero's," of course! "Quanto," what's the price of it? "Twenty Napoleons!" You old rogue B – ! you are safe in sending it to Terny's, packed; for, if it should be seen, you might have to refund the purchase-money. Necdum finitus? Another bust tempts him; he inquires, and finds it is a Jove– a Jove! and is