Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1881 — A Celebrated Book Stealer. [ARTICLE]

A Celebrated Book Stealer.

The great pattern of biblioklepts, a man who carried his passion to the most regrettable excesses, was a Spanish priest, Don Viucente of the Convent of Pobla in Arragon. When the Spanish revolution despoiled the convent libraries, Don Vincente established himself at Barcelona, under the pillars of Los Encantes, where are the stalls of the merchants of bric-a-brac, and the seats of them that sell books. In a gloomy den the Don stored up treasures that he hated to sell. Once he was present at an auc- | tion where he was outbid in the com- i petition for a rare, perhaps a unique, volume. Three nights after that the people of Barcelona were awakened by cries of “Fire!” The house and shop of the man who had bought “ Ordinacions per los Gloriosos Beys de Arago,” were blazing. When the fire was extinguished the body of the owner of the house was found with a pipe in his blackened hand and some money beside him. Every one said: “He must have set the house on fire with a spark from his pipe.” Time ] went on, and week by week the police 1 found the bodies of slain men, now iu the street, now in a ditch, now in the river. There were young men and old; all had been harmless and inoffensive citizens in their lives, and—all had been bibliophiles. A dagger in an invisible hand had reached their hearts; but the assassin had spared their purses, money, and rings. An organized search was made iu the city, and the shop of Don Vincente was examined. There, in a recess, the police discovered the copy of “Ordinacions per los Gloriosos Beys de Arago,” which ought by rights to have been bijrned with the house of its purchaser. Don Vincente was asked how he got the book. He replied in a quiet voice, demanded that his collection should be made over to the Barcelona Library, and then confessed a long array of crimes. He had strangled his rival, stolen the “ Ordinacions,” and burned the house. The slain men were people who had bought from him books which he could not really bear to part with. At his trial his council tried to prove that his confession was false, and that he might have got his books by honest means. It was objected that there was in the world only one book printed by Lambert Palmart in 1482, and that the prisoner must have stolen this, the only copy, from the library where it was treasured. The defendant’s counsel proved that there was another copy, in the Louvre; that, therefore, there might be more, and that the defendant’s might have - been honestly procured. Here Don Vincente, previously callous, uttered an hysterical cry. Said the Alcalde: *‘ At last, Vincente, you begin to understand the enormity of your offence?” “ Ah, Signor Alcalde, my error was clumsy, indeed. If you only knew how miserable I am?” “If human justice prove inflexible, there is another justice whose pity is inexhaustible. Repentance is never too late. ” “ Ab, Signor Alcalde, my copy was not unique!” With the story of this impenitent thief, we may close the roll of biblioklepts.