Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/395

 present at the trial into the gayest humor, which even the court could not entirely resist. Krüger was pronounced not guilty, continued to live quietly in Spandau, and died in the seventies, much esteemed and mourned by all his fellow-citizens.

Poritz, Leddihn, and Hensel also were acquitted, there being no conclusive proof against them. Poritz and Hensel died not many years afterwards. I saw Leddihn again in 1888 in Berlin. He had been living for several years in the capital, was a well-to-do citizen and a member of the city council. Three years afterwards the newspapers reported his death.

It is remarkable how the memory of that adventure has remained alive in various parts of Germany. Hardly a year has passed since 1850 without bringing me in newspaper articles or letters new versions of the old story, some of them extremely fantastic. When early in this century the penitentiary building in Spandau in which Kinkel had been imprisoned was taken down to make room for another structure, some citizens of Spandau sent me a photograph of it, showing the part of the building from which Kinkel escaped, Kinkel's cell, and his and my portrait, taken from a daguerreotype made in Paris, in December, 1850. In January, 1903, nearly fifty-three years after our drive from Spandau to Rostock, I received a pictorial postal card signed by a member of the German Reichstag and several other gentlemen, who sent me cordial greetings and a picture of the “White Cross Inn,” near Rostock, marked “Kinkel's Corner,” where we had stopped in our flight, and where the room in which we took an early breakfast still seems to be pointed out to guests.