here he takes a ground entirely opposed to the opinions of others. He
believes that he was thus kept as a protection against some greater
evil. His wants were supplied, he was well taken care of, and his keeper
is therefore to be looked upon as his protector. Daumer sees in the
keeper nothing but a hired murderer, whose courage or whose wickedness
failed him. It is certainly difficult to imagine a kind friend immuring
one in a dark subterranean vault, feeding one on bread, excluding light,
fellowship, amusement, thoughts,--never saying a word, but studiously
allowing one's mind to become a dreary waste. It is a friendship to
which most of us would prefer death. We are therefore inclined to
think that Daumer is here in the right. But whatever the nature of his
imprisonment, the principal argument does not lose its force.

In the third place, Feuerbach speaks of the family to which Caspar must
have belonged. Just about the time of Caspar's birth, the eldest son of
the Grand-Duchess of Baden died an infant. His death was followed in
a few years by that of his only brother, leaving several sisters, who
could not inherit the duchy. By these deaths the old House of the
Zähringer became extinct, and the offspring of a morganatic marriage
became the heirs to the throne. It was, therefore, for their interest
that the other branch should die out. In addition to this, the mother
of the new house was a woman of unbounded ambition and determined
character, and had a bitter hatred for the Grand-Duchess. Without laying
too much stress, then, upon the nearness in date of the elder child's
death and Caspar's birth, as given in the letter, there is reason to
suppose that they were the same person. There was every feeling of
interest to prompt the deed, there was the opportunity of sickness to
accomplish it in, and there was an unscrupulous woman to take advantage
of it. Is it, then, impossible that she, having command of the
house-hold, should have been able to substitute a dead for the living