From this time Lassalle, with an almost quixotic devotion, gave himself up to fighting the Countess von Hatzfeldt’s battle against her husband in the law-courts.  The ablest advocates were pitted against him.  The most eloquent legal orators thundered at him and at his client, but he met them all with a skill, an audacity, and a brilliant wit that won for him verdict after verdict.  The case went from the lower to the higher tribunals, until, after nine years, it reached the last court of appeal, where Lassalle wrested from his opponents a magnificently conclusive victory—­one that made the children of the countess absolutely safe.  It was a battle fought with the determination of a soldier, with the gallantry of a knight errant, and the intellectual acumen of a learned lawyer.

It is not surprising that many refuse to believe that Lassalle’s feeling toward the Countess von Hatzfeldt was a disinterested one.  A scandalous pamphlet, which was published in French, German, and Russian, and written by one who styled herself “Sophie Solutzeff,” did much to spread the evil report concerning Lassalle.  But the very openness and frankness of the service which he did for the countess ought to make it clear that his was the devotion of a youth drawn by an impulse into a strife where there was nothing for him to gain, but everything to lose.  He denounced the brutality of her husband, but her letters to him always addressed him as “my dear child.”  In writing to her he confides small love-secrets and ephemeral flirtations—­which he would scarcely have done, had the countess viewed him with the eye of passion.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of impressionable heart, and had many affairs such as Heine had; but they were not deep or lasting.  That he should have made a favorable impression on the women whom he met is not surprising, because of his social standing, his chivalry, his fine manners, and his handsome face.  Mr. Clement Shorter has quoted an official document which describes him as he was in his earlier years: 

Ferdinand Lassalle, aged twenty-three, a civilian born at Breslau and dwelling recently at Berlin.  He stands five feet six inches in height, has brown, curly hair, open forehead, brown eyebrows, dark blue eyes, well proportioned nose and mouth, and rounded chin.

We ought not to be surprised, then, if he was a favorite in drawing-rooms; if both men and women admired him; if Alexander von Humboldt cried out with enthusiasm that he was a wunderkind, and if there were more than Sophie Solutzeff to be jealous.  But the rather ungrateful remark of the Countess von Hatzfeldt certainly does not represent him as he really was.

“You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned,” she snarled at him; but the sneer only shows that the woman who uttered it was neither in love with him nor grateful to him.

In this paper we are not discussing Lassalle as a public agitator or as a Socialist, but simply in his relations with the two women who most seriously affected his life.  The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt, who, as we have seen, occupied—­or rather wasted—­ nine of the best years of his life.  Then came that profound and thrilling passion which ended the career of a man who at thirty-nine had only just begun to be famous.