148 
Kaspar Hauser. 
Baumel, commander of a station on the frontier between Bavari, 
and Wiirtemberg. He testified that on April 27, 1834, as he wa 
on his patrol in the Lautrach Forest, he stopped to rest in 5 
thicket not far from the path. While there he heard a voice, and, 
peeping between the bushes, saw a young man leaning against 5 
tree and talking to himself in strong excitement, and with many 
wild gestures. He lamented Kaspar Hauser’s death, and cursed 
the city of Nuremberg and the money which had been given hin 
for his part in the deed, spoke of his parents and of the sorroy 
he was about to cause them, of the danger he was in, and the 
probability of future detection and punishment, and, finally, drew 
out a sheathed weapon as though about to stab himself. The 
gendarme sprang out of the thicket to prevent the deed, but the 
young man, on seeing him approach, ran through the woods 
and up a steep hill so fast that the officer could not overtake 
him. 
This story was sworn to, and efforts were made to discover the 
young man, but without avail, and the general opinion was that 
some youth, out of mischief, had played a trick upon the police- 
man. It is more probable that the stranger, whose appearance 
did not at all correspond to that of the man described by Kaspar 
Hauser, and seen by various witnesses in Ansbach, was one of the 
assistants in the plot, and that his conscience troubled him for 
his share in the cuilt of the murder. 
In 1835 appeared Lord Stanhope’s book, ¢ Materialen zur Ges- 
chichte Kaspar Hausers. Gesammelt and herausgegeben von dem 
Grafen Stanhope.” (Heidelburg, 1835.) The work was in the form of 
letters addressed to Hickel, Meyer, and Merkel, all three his con- 
federates and enemies of Kaspar Hauser. The letters are evidently 
prepared for the public eye, and are carefully worked up so as to 
excuse his own conduct and prejudice the reader against Kaspar 
Hauser. He speaks of his former interest in the foundling as 
merely that of a benevolent man who feels pity for a helpless 
child, ignoring completely the fact that he adopted Kaspar as his 
son. and showed at first an affection co excessive as to disgust