It is answered by the fact, that it was proved, from the nature of the wounds, in both cases, that self-infliction was impossible.  Nor is it conceivable that any one should have been able so long to deceive people who were constantly with him and always on the alert.  And it is remarkable that they who saw most of Caspar, and knew him best, were most firmly convinced of his integrity,—­whilst his traducers were, almost without an exception, men who had never known him intimately.  Feuerbach, Daumer, Binder, Meier, Fuhrmann, and many others, maintain his honesty in the strongest terms.

On the other hand, it is said, that it is equally impossible for a person to have been kept in any community in the manner in which it is asserted that he was kept; discovery was inevitable.  But it must be remembered that this instance does not stand alone.  If search were made, many cases of the same kind might be collected.  It is by no means so rare an occurrence for persons to be kept secluded in such a manner as to conceal their existence from the world.  Daumer mentions two similar cases which happened about the same time.  The very year that Caspar Hauser appeared, the son of a lawyer, named Fleischmann, just deceased, was discovered in a retired chamber of the house.  He was thirty-eight years old, and had been confined there since his twelfth year.  The other case, also mentioned by Feuerbach, was still more distressing.  Dr. Horn saw, in the infirmary at Salzburg, a girl, twenty-two years of age, who had been brought up in a pig-sty.  One of her legs was quite crooked, from her having sat with them crossed; she grunted like a hog; and her actions were “brutishly unseemly in human dress.”  Daumer also relates a third case, which was made the subject of a romantic story published in a Nuremberg paper, but which, he says, lacks confirmation.  It was the discovery, in a secret place, of the grown-up son of a clergyman by his housekeeper.  Whether this be true or not, both Feuerbach and Daumer believe that many similar instances do exist, which never come to light.  It is not impossible, therefore, that Caspar Hauser was confined in a cellar to which none but his keeper sought entrance.  Who would suspect the existence of a human being, taught to be perfectly submissive and quiet and to have no wants, in such a place, when even the existence of the subterranean, prison itself was probably unknown?  The cases mentioned above were certainly more singular in this respect.

But Eschricht’s opinion is the most peculiar of all.  In his “Unverstand mid schlechte Erziehung,” he maintains that Caspar was an idiot until he was brought to Nuremberg, that his mind was then strengthened and developed, and that he was then transformed from an idiot into an impostor.  This is still more impossible than Stanhope’s theory; for in this case Daumer, Feuerbach, Hiltel the jailer, Binder the mayor, and indeed all Caspar’s earliest friends, instead of being victims of an imposture, are made partakers in the fraud.  No one acquainted with the irreproachable character of these men could entertain the idea for a minute; and when we remember that it was not one, but many, who must have been parties to it, it becomes doubly impossible.