He was able to
depose, but not on oath, that on the morning of the 14th a man in a
blouse (who had addressed him some days earlier) brought him a verbal
message from the Court gardener, asking him to come and view some clay
from a newly bored well, where, in fact, no work was being done at
this time. He found no one at the well, and went to the monument of
the rather forgotten poet Uz. Here a man came forward, gave him a
bag, stabbed him, and fled. Of the man he gave discrepant
descriptions. He became incoherent, and died.
There was snow lying, when Kaspar was stabbed, but there were no
footmarks near the well, and elsewhere, only one man's track was in
the Hofgarten. Was that track Kaspar's? We are not told. No knife was
found. Kaspar was left-handed, and Dr. Horlacher declared that the
blow must have been dealt by a left-handed man. Lord Stanhope
suggested that Kaspar himself had inflicted the wound by pressure, and
that, after he had squeezed the point of the knife through his wadded
coat, it had penetrated much deeper than he had intended, a very
probable hypothesis.
As for the bag which the assassin gave him, it was found, and Dr.
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