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53 
same time, he was surprised at the boy’s insensibility to the 
flatteries lavished upon him in society. Kaspar would often 
remark, after listening to injudicious and extravagant praise : 
“They may say what they like: I know just where I stand,” 
while towards Professor Daumer he was always humble, modest, 
and fully conscious of his own shortcomings. 
His quickness in reading character, in detecting the prominent 
traits of every individuality with which he came in contact, was 
remarkable, and this power did not lessen as he became more like 
other people. His judgment, too, was always sound ; indeed, the 
change in his intellectual condition appeared to consist rather in 
an inability to advance than in a loss of power already possessed. 
Occasionally the old brilliancy would flash out as strikingly as 
ever, and it must be remembered that in the beginning he was 
only acquiring knowledge of objects actually before him, while his 
memory was employed entirely upon trivial matters. It was quite 
another thing to exercise his mind in the wisdom of books, the 
history and literature of ancient times, the abstract truths of 
mathematics, the grammatical difficulties of a foreign language. 
Kaspar’s extreme sensitiveness towards metals gradually disap- 
peared, but for a long time he was powerfully affected by the 
electricity of thunderstorms, and the senses of sight, hearing, 
smell, and taste remained uncommonly acute. 
In May, 1829, he was made ill by the odour of varnish. He 
was seized with inflammation of the eyes, coughing, and vomiting, 
and his whole body turned yellow during the paroxysm. 
Although Kaspar Hauser’s speech and manners gave the general 
impression of a matter-of-fact person, possessed of good common- 
sense, but void of imagination, his dreams were highly poetical, 
and he often showed evidence of being moved by nobler thoughts 
than he was able to express in his newly-acquired and necessarily 
‘imited vocabulary. 
In April, 1829, he had a symbolical dream, which, in the light 
of after events, seemed prophetic. He dreamed that a beautiful 
man, dressed in a white robe, appeared before his bed, and offered 
him a wreath of flowers, with the announcement of his early