The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-09-18
FAMOUS DOUBLES FIGURE IN HISTORY Diamond Necklace Affair of
 Marie Antoinette CARDINAL DE ROMANS ERR0 MIstook the Queen for Paris Prom eneuse-Man Who Looked Like Napoleon lll-Many Cases
 on Record.
CARDINAL DE ROMANS ERRO
BY PIERRE RosIER.


 Paris, September s.-The Beck tragedy of errors has, see, been serving as a dull season topic. Let up hope that the stir 1t causes In Fleet street will not die out before the Long Vacation ends. I do not so much wonder at miscarrlages of Justice arising from doubles as at so few happening. To test a witness to identity by setting him or her to pick the ac- eused prisoner out of a crowd is really no test. A person charged with a serious crime must feel terribly nervous, however innocent. His oountenance would prob ably display this feeling and convey a hint to the person seeking Identify him. For the test to hold water, all the other men among whom he Is placed should be made also to imagine themselves suspect ed of the same crime. Three years ago. In a Norman village the mother of a soldier saw a murderer in her own son. He would have gone to the gullotine had the jury not admitted exculpatlng cir rumstances. The real murderer confessed the crime on his death bed, and made so clear statement as to justify the in tervention Of the court of Cessation. He resembled the technically guilty man. The uniform, as he rushed by the pea sant woman's cottage at o'clock in the morning. completed the resemblance. In Normandy the visual nerves of both men and women are often blunted by cider brandy, and were so probably in this in stance. French witnesses generally have clear perceptions and heads. Still at times when public rumor'' runs strong against an accused party they may be suggestionised by 1t into seeing identity where there is only resemblance.
 Rested on Identity.
 The whole defense of Marie Antoniette in the diamond necklace affair rests on mistaken identity. Who made the mis- take? Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Chap lain of the court and ex-Ambassador of the court of Vienna. He had been in the habit of seeing her from her thirteenth year, and had celebrated mass in her presence, as Grand Chaplain, the Sunday before his adventure in the Bosquet de la Reine. Few at court would have been more familiar with her appearance. The person for whom he mistook her. Olive, a PaIais Royal promeneuse, was ten years younger. The Cardinals mother had fill ed the first place in the Queens House. hold. One might imagine any mistake as 
 court, and the higher Parlement or high court of justice of Paris. Yet a whole school of historians have, within the last twenty-five years. and at the cost of much serious research. been proving the opposite.
 The Bosquet de la Reine Is close to the west end of the great terrace and is still simply theatre de verdure. Two avenues with a western aspect lead into 1t. I on purpose went to the Bosquet de la Refine on an anniversary evening of the alleged hurried apparition there of the Ill., fated Queen to the gallant Cardinal. The setting sun lighted 1t up magnificently. If the sun passed between the sun and the Cardinal his eyes might have been dazed almost to blindness. This could have well happened. If he stood with his back to the sun he must have seen so well the f1eeting figure as to preclude the possibility of error. About a year before the esclandre the Queen'sImperial moth- CT remonstrated with her on her inordin- ate love of jewelry, and refused to admit the extravagant sums she spent on 1t could in any way add to the dignity of the crown. The material remonstrant cited herself as an example. She never afforded herself more costly jewels than were absolutely necessary. It could not he said that her regal situation suffered in consequence. This letter appears in
 
 weighing moral evidence 1t should not be discarded. The judges of the Parle- ment of Paris might have known of 1t from the gossip in the Queens House. hold.
 Napoleon III. Had Double.
 The Emperor Napoleon III. had a dou- ble of about his own age in the contrac- tor for public fetes during the Second Empire. His name has escaped my re-
 
 soldiers shoes and uniforms and he kept his stores at the old hippodrone af- ter the lease of a circus company fell in His likeness to the emperor startled me the first time I saw him. This happened at the ticket office of the Passy railway station. When I scanned him more close ly saw that he was not Louis Napoleon risen from the grave. No double will bear scrutiny. however we'll made up, as this particular one would have been. He knew of the resemblance I had not iced, and gloried in it. The Comte de Paris also had double or what looked one at distance. The likeness strong enough to have been the pivot of trag- edy of errors, disappeared greatly when he took off his hat. The Comte de Paris had pointed head like the German Elm perors; the person I speak of as resembl- ing him had full forhead projecting near the roots of the hair.
 I often saw old and young ladies ex- tremey like Queen Victoria The former mostly came from Frankfort or parts of Franconia, near the Duchy of Coburg. The sister of the late Mrs Moses Levy. of the Telegraph, could, had her complex ion been sunburnt, have easily passed off at the age of eighty for the late queen. Louis Phillppes double. an Italian nam ed Chappini, emigrated to the cape. His grand son-in-law is MT. Rudd the asso- cjate of Cecil Rhodes. The resemblance was even stronger between Louis Phil Iippe, and Chiappini padre. have some where letter dictated by the late Lord Newborough to his son. and addressed to me, in which his lordship stated that the first tirle he saw the Citizen King he exclaimed: What an image of Chiap- pini'' and could not keep his eyes from following him for a whole evening.
 In history we have the false Smerdis. Different imposters passed themselves off as Sebastian, A-ng of Portugal, who was believed to have been killed in battle with the Moors in Morocco. Miss Jane Porter early in the last century revived the legend in a novel, She sided with trose who held Sebastian to have beer wounded orly, and hunted down by Phil ir II, of Spain, who seized on his her itage Three false loans of Arc" appear ed in the six years following that of her execution. Two of them avoided every rne who hao know her.