A BEAUTIFUL FIEND.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 122, 17 December 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

A BEAUTIFUL FIEND.

THE COUNTESS WHO LURED HEli LOVERS TO DESTRUCTION.

(From Tit Bits.) A few years ago there was no more Leautitul, or, to all appearance, enviable woman in all Austria than the I Countess Gitano. As she drove on tne j Vienna boulevards lolling luxuriously in her carriage behind her powdered coachman and footman in gorgeous liveries, all eyes were drawn to the ladinnt vision of loveliness, with the proud, daintily-poised head, the glorious dark hair, largo ©yes blue as violets, and the sweet red lips parted in a smile which revealed tho gleam of pearly teeth. If ever a face boie the impress of purity and innocence it was that of the Countess Gitano. And yet, as she passed Cn her sumptuous equipage, there were those who looked at her with eyes of scorn, and who whispered cmnious words to each other for among the few in Vienna who knew her story, strange tales were told of the Countess whose angel's face, it was said, masked an oil heart. Never, it was whispered, had the great gift of beauty been 60 fatally exploited. Under its spell 6he had drawn lovers to her as a flame lures moth», and each in turn had paid a terrible' price for -»ie infatuation against which ho was powerless. More than on© victm of her witchery had been driven to suicide; others she had deserted after wrecking their livos and homes; and between two of them she had 60 inflamed mutual jealousy that one had 6lain the other in a duel.

SCORES OF MEN AT HER FEET. And while she had thus left behind her a wake of ruin, she continued her smiling way to new o<»i.|:i;*>ls>. Tii woman with the leep, soulf ll eyes and the angel face was, m fait, a Leartless siren who used her dower of beauty and her rare gifts of fascination to li:ie men to destruction, revolling in her powers of conquest, and reckmg nothing of the fate of her victims. A dozen years eailier, Sonia Mar.<?!la had already, as a girl of eighteen, become famous for her loveliness and her charms, which were a heritage from her Irish ancestry. Almost before she emerged from short frocks she had a legion of lovers at her feet; but to one and all she turned a cold, if dainty shoulder, until a Count of lorfg lineage and vast estates joined the ranks of her slaves, and to him she at last gave her hand. For a few years she lived fairly happily with her hsuband, until, wearied of him, 6he sought distraction and relief in a lover. Tiring of hiin in turn —for she could not long be constant to any man—she conceived tho expedient of denouncing him to the Count in an anonymous letter, and had the satisfaction of seeing him killed by her husband in a duel. One lover the less was a matter of indifference to the Countess, for she had many eager to take his place; and it was not long before the Count had more than one formidable rival in her affections. He was, however, in no mind to issue more challenges. It was abundantly clear that there was no possibility of happiness for him with a wife whose affections were so inconstant and volatile. It was better that they should part; and, appealing to the law, he had no difficulty in securing a divorce —whifch was precisely what his errant spouse desired abov© all.

RUINING A RICH LAWYER. Thus free from matrimonial fetters, the Countess was quick to ensnare another man in her toils—this timo a lawyer of good repute, with a large and lucrative practice and a loving wife and family So powerless was the attorney to resist her allurements that, within a short time, he was as effectually ensnared as any of his predecessors, and was the most abject of slaves to her whims and caprices. Such, indeed, was his infatuation that his neglected practice had soon gone to pieces and his wife had secured a divorce.

Still more desperately in love than ever with his enslaver, the lawyer fled, taking with him several thousands of pounds left in his care by one of his clients—only to find himself deserted by the Countess, for whom he had laid his life and home ?n ruins, and who now 6et out on a grand, amorous tour of Europe, seeking fresh victims with long puises to feed her extravagance. In her wake followed her disconsolate and abject lover, happy to get an occasional smile or kind word from her, and compelled to look helplessly cn while she coquetted with his successful rivals. So desperate did he at last become that he tried to take his life by Pqisoij, £>nd was only saved ftQTi the death lie longed for by the opportune arrival of a doctor with a itoiuohpump. COUNT MAXIMA IlEfl HOPELESS SLAVE. It was about the time of this nar-rowly-averted tragedy that the Countess spread her net to trap a young Prince, of some wealth, whom she* quickly had at her mercy—following at the "wheels of her chariot" through Europe, grateful for any crumbs of favour 6he threw to him. In a lew months h© squandered thousands—ail his available ready money—on her, and his wife had secured a divorce.

Having thus served her purpose, the Counters now began to look out for a successor to her Prince of the empty purse; and she soon lound liim, in an old acquaintance, one of her early and unsuccessful wooers, Count Maxinia, a man of considerable riches. That the Count was happily married was an obstacle to smile at; no man had ever yet been able to resist her spell, and lie should not prove an exception. Nor did he. Within a few months he Was her hopeless slave; and his wife dying before the divorce proceedings she had started could be consummated, the Count and Countess became formally engaged. Then followed a few months of paradise —a fool's paradise, it is true—for the infatuated Count. He squandered his gold upon her. Together they went to Vienna and to Nice, where he entertained her regally at his villa, and where her gowns and her costly jewels and equipages created a great sensation. But she had no intention whatever of becoming his wife; it was his wealth, not himself, she coveted and let t£ work t-o procure.

THREATS 01' A JEALOI'S PRINCE With the Distance of her discarded but still devoted lover, the attorney, she persuaded the Count to insure his life for an enormous sum, making 6ure that in case he was'killed there could be no question of disputing the payments This step taken, the Countess had little difficulty in inducing her lover to execute a will, leaving the whole of his fortune to her. All that now remained was to ensure his early departure from the world, thus making a rich woman of her 1 ; and to ensure this desirable event, she enlisted the services of tlie attorney, who gladly gave {heii) ia return fcjr her j?lou}U'e

she would marry him and share the I spoil with him. The lawyer's plan ol yetting rid of the Count was simplicity itself. He would travel from Venice to Vienna by the same train as his victim, get jnto the same compartment by 6ome pretext, offer him a drugged cigar, and shoot him after the cigar had rendered him unconscious. The scheme wa* simple, if risky; but when the time came to put it into exeiiitoa. tho would-bt murderer's nerve failed him; and to the Countess 3 intense and disappointment, tho Count readied Vienna in perfect satety. But although her scheme had thus ignominiously failed, she was not the woman to abandon an enterprise on which her heart was set; and before long she had found another tool in a youthful Prince, who was so madly in love with her that he was ready to take his own or anyone else's life at her biding. Playing on his hot-blood-ed jealousy, and promising to marry him if ho succeeded, she found an eager tool ready to her hand. The Prince, it was arranged, was to journey to Venice and kill the Couiiv in his villa there. As he had alreaoy sent the Count a letter threatening to kill him if he married the Countess, the murder would seem a natural sequence to the threat. In order to remove all suspicion from herself and the attorney, who again was her accomplice, she arranged to send him, too, to Venice, ostensibly to ensure the Count's safety, because " she had heard the jealous Prince utter threats against his life." Such was the diabolically clever scheme by which the Countess designed to secure her own safety, while en suring that one lover should 6lay another in order to make herself rich But the best-laid schemes >f men are apt to fail, and this proved to be among them. The lawyer and the two detectives h© took with him were actually in front of the Counts villa when the Prince entered on his murderous mission, of which, 110 uv.t r, the detectives had not been warned, their instructions were to seir.e any man who rushed from the villa; and the man they pounced upon was not the assassin, but the Count' 6 butler, who ran out to g ve the alarm after the foul deed wa6 done.

Suspicion, however, had been roii6cd against both the Countess and hor accomplice, who were arrested in Vienna just after they had collected the insurance money on the Count's life; and the Prince's arrest followed quickly. In the tral that ensued, the cunninglydevised plan of murder was revealed in all its hideousnes snakedness; and the Countess and her two accomplices were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, after one of the most sensational trials ever witnessed in any Court of Law.