I state first the theory of the second party in the dispute, which
believed that Kaspar was some great one: I employ language as
romantic as my vocabulary affords.
* * * * *
Darkness in Karlsruhe! 'Tis the high noon of night: October 15, 1812.
Hark to the tread of the Twelve Hours as they pass on the palace
clock, and join their comrades that have been! The vast corridors are
still; in the shadows lurk two burly minions of ambitious crime,
Burkard and Sauerbeck. Is that a white moving shadow which approaches
through the gloom? There arises a shriek, a heavy body falls, 'tis a
lacquey who has seen and recognised _The White Lady of the Grand Ducal
House_, that walks before the deaths of Princes. Burkard and Sauerbeck
spurn the inanimate body of the menial witness. The white figure,
bearing in her arms a sleeping child, glides to the tapestried wall,
and vanishes through it, into the Chamber of the Crown Prince, a babe
of fourteen days. She returns carrying _another_ unconscious infant
form, she places it in the hands of the ruffian Sauerbeck, she
disappears. The miscreant speeds with the child through a postern into
the park, you hear the trample of four horses, and the roll of the
carriage on the road.
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