Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/765

Rh tried to persuade her to it is another matter. As to myself, I always answered that I held to the judgment of my mother, who has often said, like the old margravine, 'It is impossible.'"

But King Louis had on his side all the malcontents of the grand-duchy. Every gaming-master who complained of a denial of justice, every solicitor who had been refused, avenged his injury by saying, "Caspar Hauser became inconvenient to you, and you had him assassinated." The name of the mysterious personage who was supposed to have conducted the affair was boldly given, and Count Stanhope was accused of having been a go-between in the crime. The field was beaten for proofs of the accusations. Time and again some sharp-witted man in want of money would send word to the court of Carlsruhe that he was the possessor of secret papers in which the tragic adventure was related from point to point. He would ask for a large sum, and they would give nothing, and then he would publish his papers. Persons of keen scent and reading could recognize in his little work whole chapters from old factums, which had fallen into oblivion, and scenes extracted from a romance by Seybold, which was no longer read. Such, according to Herr von der Linde, was the history of the famous pamphlet of 1882, on which the tribunal of Ratisbon executed justice.

Merker reduced the question to these terms: We know nothing of Caspar Hauser except what it has pleased himself to tell us, and no one ever passed a week with him without surprising him more than once in a lie. What credit does a story deserve that is founded on the testimony of a downright liar? But believers would object: Is it possible to suppose that a young man of an uncultivated and very narrow mind should have a genius for invention, and that he could maintain his imposture to the end without betraying himself or departing from his assumed part? To this the doubters replied: that the public had kindly taken it in hand to facilitate his task for him, and open the way for him, which he had not even had to take the trouble to mark out. Some one has said that in France the first day is for infatuation, the second for criticism, and the third for indifference. The infatuation of the people of Nuremberg seems to have been more enduring than usual; for the days of criticism and indifference never came for Caspar Hauser.

There are two kinds of cunning. One, which sometimes has genius in it, composes in advance a grand plan, conforms all its conduct to it, and prepares afar off, for its adversaries, traps which shall be sprung suddenly and surely. That is the cunning of Ulysses and the politicians. Caspar Hauser had nothing but the passive cunning of the chameleon, which changes color to agree with the objects around it. He accommodated himself to circumstances; he lent himself with unlimited compliance to the desires and prejudices of his benefactors, and he worked upon their prepossessions and their open credulity.