39
Kaspar Hauser.
than two years in existence, it was sheer cruelty to demand a
knowledge of the language and exploits of a nation dead for
centuries, and doubly dead to one who had not been accustomed
‘0 hear about them from infancy.
Kaspar used to complain that he saw no use in cramming him.
self with Latin, since he neither expected nor wished to become
a clergyman ; and when he was told that it was necessary to know
Latin in order to understand German thoroughly, he asked
whether the Romans were obliged to study German in order to
inderstand Latin !
As might have been expected, he did not distinguish himself at
the Gymnasium. The lessons were difficult, and he did not feel
any deep interest in subjects so foreign to his personal experience.
He was too mature for companions of his own capacity, and
t00 childish for fellow-students of his own age; he felt alone in
the world, and the more deeply he was able to reflect, the more
cerrible seemed to him the deprivation of his liberty during child-
hood and early youth. He realised that no later mental acquisi-
tions could atone for the absence of early associations and the
lack of home ties ; while, added to his unavailing regrets for the
2mpty past, was the ever-present dread of an unseen foe. Always
timid, shocked at any exhibition of cruelty, distressed at every
manifestation of pain, he became cowardly, in anticipation of
bossible disaster through the untiring efforts of the mysterious
enemies who had blasted the life they were now trying to destroy.
1
0y(
[
In March, 1830, Lieutenant von Pirch, an officer stationed in
Berlin, visited Nuremberg in order to ascertain whether Kaspar
Hauser understood the Hungarian language. I.ieutenant von
Pirch had read several newspaper articles which suggested this
hypothesis as an explanation of Kaspar’s inability to speak
German when first discovered. The result of his experiments
was a strengthening of the suspicion that Kaspar’s earliest years
vere spent in Hungary.
After Lieutenant Pirch came the celebrated humorist, Saphir,
from Berlin, upon the same errand, and he went away with the same
