annoyed in any manner, he will long bear it patiently, and will try to get out of the way of the person who is thus troublesome to him, or will endeavor to effect a change in his conduct by mild expostulations; but, finally, if he cannot help himself in any other manner, as soon as an opportunity of doing so offers, he will very quietly slip off the bonds that confine him,—­yet without bearing the least malice against him who may have injured him.  He is obedient, obliging, and yielding; but the man who accuses him wrongfully, or asserts to be true what he believes to be untrue, need not expect, that, from mere complaisance, or from other considerations, he will submit to injustice or to falsehood; he will always modestly, but firmly, insist upon his right; or perhaps, if the other seems inclined obstinately to maintain his ground against him, he will silently leave him.”

But the fate which had been pursuing this unfortunate being, and without which the tragedy of his life would have been incomplete, overtook him at last.  On the 15th of December, 1833, he was induced by some unknown person to meet him in a retired spot in the city of Anspach, under the pretence that he should then have the secret of his parentage revealed to him.  The real object was his murder, and this time it was successful.  Caspar was stabbed to the heart.  He still had sufficient strength left to walk about a thousand paces; and, indeed, the wound was outwardly so insignificant, that it was at first believed to be a mere scratch.  This strengthened an opinion which was then gradually gaining ground, that Caspar was an impostor; for it was firmly believed by some that he had inflicted this wound upon himself, as well as the one received in 1829, in order to quicken the somewhat languishing interest taken in him.  Nor did they give up this opinion when the wound was found to be fatal.  They then boldly asserted that he had wounded himself more severely than he had intended.  And not content with simply maintaining this absurd opinion, they taunted him with it on his death-bed, so that he was not even allowed to die in peace.  Nothing was wanting to fill his bitter cup.  How terrible must have been the mental torture to wring from so resigned a soul the exclamation, “O God!  O God! to die thus with contumely and disgrace!” The German is still more expressive,—­"Ach, Gott! ach, Gott! so abkratzen muessen mit Schimpf und Schande!"

Such was the life of Caspar Hauser.  For nearly seventeen years the inmate of a dreary prison, shut out from the light, without a single companion in his misery, drugged when it was necessary to change his linen, with no food but bread,—­for seventeen years did he thus exist, —­his mind a perfect blank.  Suddenly cast upon the world, amid strange beings whom he could not understand and by whom he was not understood, he long knew scarcely a sensation save that of pain.  And when at last he did become accustomed to civilized life, and the