Feuerbach (who did not see Kaspar till July) says that his feet were
covered with blisters, the gaoler says that they were merely swollen
by the tightness of his boots.
Once in prison, Kaspar, who asked to be taken home, adopted the _role_
of 'a semi-unconscious animal,' playing with toy horses, 'blind though
he saw,' yet, not long after, he wrote a minute account of all that he
had then observed. He could only eat bread and water: meat made him
shudder, and Lord Stanhope says that this peculiarity did occur in the
cases of some peasant soldiers. He had no sense of hearing, which
means, perhaps, that he did not think of pretending to be amazed by
the sound of church bells till he had been in prison for some days.
Till then he had been deaf to their noise. This is Feuerbach's story,
but we shall see that it is contradicted by Kaspar himself, in
writing. Thus the alleged facts may be explained without recourse even
to a theory of intermittent deafness. Kaspar was no more deaf than
blind. He 'was all there,' and though, ten days after his arrival, he
denied that he had ever seen Weichmann, in ten days more his memory
for faces was deemed extraordinary, and he minutely described all
that, on May 26 and later, he had observed.
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