The Russellville Democrat., 1880-09-02
DECAYED NOBILITY.
The Rotten Hcase of Brunswick Ends in
 the French Hulks.

The Rotten Hcsase of Brunswick Ends in
 the French Hulks.
 Paris Correspondence of the New York World.
 The origin of the great houses is lost ill obscurity, and the end of them equal lv, but 1t is always interesting when one can trace them either to their origin or in their decline. 1a case which has just been tried in the law courts in France helps us to this in the case of one great European house, that of the Duke of Brunswick. It is mt 50 much of de- cline as rotting out. It ends i'll the hulks.a It ends, 1t is true, only ill the person of an iliegltimate representative of the royal Duke, but we must take what we fl Id. The other day Uric Eu- gene Fuelfe de Collin de Bar, Vicomte de Civrv, appeared before French jury on charge of robbery and general swindling. He had been arrested in England on an extradition warrant, and before he went to England he had qui- etly relieved the landlady of the fur nished apartment which he occupied in Paris of a considerable quantity of her property. He had hired the apartment for considerable sum inthe fashionable quarter, and he no sooner obtained pos session ot it than he broke open the drawers containing the private effects ot the proprietress anG made off with them. His confederates in this transaction were his own valet and stewart and other officers of his horsehold." The poor landladv had no suspicion of her lodger, for he bore noble French name and was of princely origin. His smother was the daughter of the Duke of Brunswick. His father was a French gentleman of extremely good descent. The poor lad was born into every species of elegant corruption, if that adjective can ever be applied to that noun. His grandfather lived the life that every one in Paris knows, went about painted up to the eyebrows, and wearing a curled perrttque, while his morals were even more artifi- cially nasty than his manner of dressing
 He installed several temporary favorites in his household at short intervals of succession, and the mother of Uric de Civry was one of them. She was brought up in kind of splendid Bohe- mia. Her father took little notice of her, being entirely engrossed with his notice of himself, and he made very slender provision for her education and training. She therefore had but little of this description t) transmit to her son. In worldly goods she was almost as badly off, for the old Duke kept a tight hold on his purse strings. She ob- tained very little money from him, though he rolled in millions, yet at the same time, though living in his house, she was always within sight of the great est luxurIes that money could purchase
 Her lips, as it were, touched river of liquid gold, but she was still athirst She formed most costly and extravapant tastes, and had nothing to gratify them with. Her son was in this respect true child ot his mother, and in others the true grandson of the illustrious Duke, so tbat he was thoroughly well equipped with bad qualities on both sides, and not a single vice was wanting for his compo- sition. He could not work, to beg he was ashamed, but he was not ashamed to steal, and he lived pretty comfortably for time in Paris on his wits and his name. His grandfather was known to be so rich that nobody hesitated to trust the young fellow, and even when the grandfather died and left all his money away from the family to the City of Ge- neva, there was still hope of recover ing it by lawsuit. In the meantime Uric de Civry went on cheating In the hope that something would turn up in the shape of favorable decision in his mothers suit for the recovery of the property. He might probably after that have turned an honest man. That was no doubt his intention, but unfortunate ly before he turned honest he had to get hls grandfather's money, and before he could get his grandfather's money, he ran short of ready cash, and was obliged to clear out the clothes-presses of his landladv, as before stated. There was hue and a cry after him, and he ran away to England. In England he was not idle. He was handsome fellow, as may be inferred from this description of him as he stood in the dock the other day:
 "Twenty-seven years old, elegantly dressed, dark blue eyes, bright red lips, white teeth, elegantly -curled mustache" --in fact, a perfect dead-shot in the war fare of drawing-room and ball. With these advantages he could work as well in England as in Paris. and he found means to commend himself 10 the favor of a lady of the British aristocracy, and was living very comfortably on the pocket money which she gave him when the police quietly took him by the collar. Some sort of defense had to be made for him as he stood in the French dock, but it was little to the pur- pose. The whole case was proven to the hilt. He had become the accom- plice of his very servants in the most scandalous kind of robberies, and robberies were the least disgraceful things in his career. He denied them to the last, though he incidentally ad- mitted other weaknesses which would have been quite sufficient to hang him in country where lynching-law pre- vailed, The judges sent him to prison for three years-and thus ends the story of a noble life.