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Kaspar Hauser.
VI. He declared from the beginning, and never changed his
statement. that he was stabbed by an unknown man.
VII. He was quiet and resigned in his last moments, and died
in a frame of mind unlikely to exist in a person dying with a
troubled conscience.
Then comes Meyer's catalogue of reasons for believing that
Kaspar did kill himself, a theory which would demand constant
and thorough deception on his part. In this list of charges
Meyer delivers himself of all the spite and hatred which he had
been obliged to moderate in his previous remarks.
Everything that Kaspar Hauser said and did has the worst
construction put upon it, and the narrative shows such a system
of spying, fault-finding, and correcting, as would lead many to
suspect that the young man might have committed suicide merely
to escape from this unbearable tyranny.
Meyer accuses Kaspar of treating high personages with respect
and poor people with contempt, in direct contradiction of
Daumer, Fuhrmann, and others, who praised Kaspar’s friendliness
rowards everybody, and his tender pity for the poor.
According to Meyer, Kaspar showed remarkable keenness of
perception and correctness of judgment respecting the conduct of
other people ; but as soon as his own affairs were under discussion
he was unjust and partial, being blind to everything but his own
interests. In short, he was sly, deceitful, untruthful, politic,
selfish, snobbish, conceited, hypocritical, irreligious, hard-hearted,
and void of honourable feeling of every kind.
Appended to Meyer's book is a collection of letters written by
Hickel, between the dates, June 2, 1828, and May 19, 1834, but
bearing internal evidence of having been compiled at a later
period.
Thus, the first fragment is dated June 2, 1828; the fourth,
March 30, 1834; the fifth, June 2, 1828 again. In June, 1834, he
tells the story of Kaspar Hauser’s appearance in Nuremberg. He