[Footnote D:  ANSELM RITTER VON FEUERBACH’S Leben und Wirken, aus seinen ausgedruckten Briefen, Tagebuechern, Vortraegen und Denkschriften, veroeffentlicht von seinem Sohne, LUDWIG FEUERBACH.  Leipzig, 1852.]

The second division of the paper relates to the imprisonment, and here he takes a ground entirely opposed to the opinions of others.  He believes that he was thus kept as a protection against some greater evil.  His wants were supplied, he was well taken care of, and his keeper is therefore to be looked upon as his protector.  Daumer sees in the keeper nothing but a hired murderer, whose courage or whose wickedness failed him.  It is certainly difficult to imagine a kind friend immuring one in a dark subterranean vault, feeding one on bread, excluding light, fellowship, amusement, thoughts,—­never saying a word, but studiously allowing one’s mind to become a dreary waste.  It is a friendship to which most of us would prefer death.  We are therefore inclined to think that Daumer is here in the right.  But whatever the nature of his imprisonment, the principal argument does not lose its force.

In the third place, Feuerbach speaks of the family to which Caspar must have belonged.  Just about the time of Caspar’s birth, the eldest son of the Grand-Duchess of Baden died an infant.  His death was followed in a few years by that of his only brother, leaving several sisters, who could not inherit the duchy.  By these deaths the old House of the Zaehringer became extinct, and the offspring of a morganatic marriage became the heirs to the throne.  It was, therefore, for their interest that the other branch should die out.  In addition to this, the mother of the new house was a woman of unbounded ambition and determined character, and had a bitter hatred for the Grand-Duchess.  Without laying too much stress, then, upon the nearness in date of the elder child’s death and Caspar’s birth, as given in the letter, there is reason to suppose that they were the same person.  There was every feeling of interest to prompt the deed, there was the opportunity of sickness to accomplish it in, and there was an unscrupulous woman to take advantage of it.  Is it, then, impossible that she, having command of the house-hold, should have been able to substitute a dead for the living child?  Accept the proposition, and the mystery is solved; reject it, and we are still groping in the dark.  Nevertheless, there are circumstances which, even then, are incapable of explanation; but it is the most satisfactory theory, and certainly has less objections than the others.  Feuerbach came to this conclusion early; for his paper addressed to Queen Caroline of Bavaria was written in 1832, the year before Caspar’s death.  Delicacy forbade the open discussion of the question; but, even at the time, this theory found many supporters.  Some even went so far as to say that Feuerbach’s sudden death the same year was owing to the indefatigable zeal with which he was ferreting out the mystery.