this situation he knew not; for he had had no knowledge of time.  He knew not when or how he came there.  Nor had he any recollection of ever having been in a different situation, or in any other than in that place.  The man with whom he had always been never did him any harm.  Yet one day, shortly before he was taken away, when he had been running his horse too hard, and had made too much noise, the man came and struck him upon his arm with a stick, or with a piece of wood; this caused the wound which he brought with him to Nuremberg.

“Pretty nearly about the same time, the man once came into his prison, placed a small table over his feet, and spread something white upon it, which he now knows to have been paper; he then came behind him, so as not to be seen by him, took hold of his hand, and moved it backwards and forwards on the paper, with a thing (a lead pencil) which he had stuck between his fingers.  He (Hauser) was then ignorant of what it was; but he was mightily pleased, when he saw the black figures which began to appear upon the white paper.  When he felt that his hand was free, and the man was gone from him, he was so much pleased with this new discovery, that he could never grow tired of drawing these figures repeatedly upon the paper.  This occupation almost made him neglect his horses, although he did not know what those characters signified.  The man repeated his visits in the same manner several times.

“Another time the man came, lifted him from the place where he lay, placed him on his feet, and endeavored to teach him to stand.  This he repeated at several different times.  The manner in which he effected this was the following:  he seized him firmly around the breast, from behind, placed his feet behind Caspar’s feet, and lifted these, as in stepping forward.

“Finally, the man appeared once again, placed Caspar’s hands over his shoulders, tied them fast, and thus carried him on his back out of the prison.  He was carried up (or down) a hill.  He knows not how he felt; all became night, and he was laid upon his back.”—­By the expression, “all became night,” he meant that he fainted away.  The little which Caspar was able to relate in regard to his journey is not of any particular interest, and we omit it here.

This is all that is known with any certainty of the early life of this unfortunate being.  The conjectures to which it has given rise will be considered later.  Let us first finish his history.

As was to be expected, Caspar Hauser’s faculties developed very gradually.  His mind was in a torpor, and, placed suddenly amid, to him, most exciting scenes, it was long before he could understand the simplest phenomena of Nature.  The unfolding of his mind was exactly like that of a child.  Feuerbach, in his book on Caspar Hauser, gives the main features of this gradual development.  We can only pick out a few.