In my view,
Kaspar was, to put it mildly, an ambulatory automatist, who had
strayed away, like the Rev. Mr. Bourne, from some place where nobody
desired his return: rather his lifelong absence was an object of hope.
The longer Kaspar lived, the more frequently was he detected in every
sort of imposture that could make him notorious, or enable him to
shirk work.
Kaspar had for months been the pet mystery of Nuremberg. People were
sure that, like the mysterious prisoner of Pignerol, Les Exiles, and
the Isle Sainte-Marguerite (1669-1703?), Kaspar was some great one,
'kept out of his own.' Now the prisoner of Pignerol was really a
valet, and Kaspar was a peasant. Some thought him a son of Napoleon:
others averred (as we saw) that he was the infant son of the Grand
Duke Karl of Baden, born in 1812, who had not died within a fortnight
of his birth, but been spirited away by a lady disguised as the
spectral 'White Lady of Baden,' an aristocratic _ban-shie_. The subtle
conspirators had bred the Grand Duke Kaspar in a dark den, the theory
ran, hoping that he would prove, by virtue of such education, an
acceptable recruit for the Bavarian cavalry, and that no questions
would be asked.
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