Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-01-17
4 CELEBRATED HOAX,
Story of the Fortsas Catalogue
 and Its Author.
CLEVER AND BRAZEN FRAUD.
This Ingenious Publication Completely Fooled the Savants and BibliophiIes of Europe and Was the Literary Sen sation of Its Day.

Fooled the Savants and BibiophiIes
 of Europe and Was the Literary Sen
 sation of Its Day.
 When r. T. Barnum cynically re- marked that the American people loved to be fooled he might just as well have left out the adjective, for that Americans are much more gulli- ble than natives of other lands can very readily be called into question by anybody at all familiar with the his- 1 tory of hoaxdom. l suppose that for pure effronteyy and ingenious brazen- ness the Fortsas Catalogue stands in the front rank of deception. Yet this pamphlet was foisted not upon the American public, but upon the savants and bibliophiles of Europe-men skill ed in the art of books and in the detec- tion of forgery. So cleverly was this fraud conceived and executed that 1t deserves to stand in the front rank of any consideration. however brief, of clever deceptions.
 The FortsaS Catalogue was publish ed in 1S40-a small book purporting to be the catalogue of the private library of certain Count J. N. A. de Fortsas of Binche. in Belgium. Although the book consisted of but fourteen pages and listed only fifty-two titles, it stirred up veritable teapot tempest among the wise heads. The reason was not far to seek-not one of the books mentioned in the catalogue was to be found in any other library or publishers list. They were all abso- lutely sole surviving" copies of in tensely interesting works. In the words of the catalogue itself, the count pitilessly expelled from his shelves books for which he had paid their weight in gold-as soon as he learned that a work up to that time unknown had been mentioned in any catalogue" Each new research of learned investigators into the book lore of antiquity, it was claimed, had thnned still further the already dec imated ranks of the counts sacred battalion" Weary of his tremendous and self imposed task of collecting only unique specimens, the count was stated to have died on Sept 1, 1889. and his library was now offered for sale Apparently the fraudulent char acter of such master foolery was quite patent Yet the high brows bit" en- Enthusiastically. and there resulted one of the most amusing incidents of the decade.
 For instantly the learned book lovers were up in arms. each trying to outdo his rival and secure for himself the most precious of the treasures at the sale which was advertised. Orders poured in from all over Europe on the behalf of scholarly societies, libraries, royal families and literary epicures. One bookseller came all the way from Amsterdam just to see No. 15. the Corpus Juris Civilis.' The Princess de Ligne flor the honor of her fami- ly" ordered No. 4S at any price to sup press it on account of certain discred- itable family episodes it was supposed to contain. Many other prominent per sons and institutions clamored for chance at the collection. Men re- membered having seen books that nev. CT existed" says William Shepard. "The foreman in Casteman's printing office at Tourney had distinct recollec- tions of bogus volume credited to his press"
 Unfortunately the advertised sale never came off. On the 9th of Au- gust. the day before it was to have be- gun. the Brussels papers announced that the town of Binche had determin- ed to keep the collection intact by pur- chasing it with public funds. The amusing part of this statement was that Binche was n most insignificant village. quite unable to purchase much of anything. let alone universally de- sired library. Still, even that state ment was believed.
 The truth eventually transpired that the Count de Fo-tsas. his miraculous library and the catalogue were all the creations or an ingenious fellow named Rene ChaIons. living in Belgium. His catalogue begot a rather extensive It, erature of it's own. which has since been collected and published under the title "DocLments ct Particularites His toriques sur le Comte de Fortsas." A copy of the original catalogue now rests in the Congressional library at Washington. - Cincinnati Commercial