Perhaps this nonsense still has its
believers, seduced by 'Lady Caroline Albersdorf, _nee_ Lady Graham,'
by Lord Daniel Alban Durteal, and by the spirit of Kaspar himself,
who, summoned by Daniel Dunglas Home, at a _seance_ with the Empress
Eugenie, apparently, announced himself as Prince of Baden. No
authority for this interesting ghost of one who disbelieved in ghosts
is given.
It is quite possible that Kaspar Hauser no more knew who he was than
the valet of 1669-1703 knew why he was a prisoner, no more than Mr.
Browne, when a dealer in 'notions,' knew that he was Mr. Bourne, a
dissenting preacher. Nothing is certain, except that Kaspar was an
hysterical humbug, whom people of sense suspected from the first, and
whom believers in animal magnetism and homoeopathy accepted as some
great one, educated by his Royal enemies in total darkness--to fit him
for the military profession.
It is difficult, of course, to account for the impossibility of
finding whence Kaspar had come to Nuremberg. But, in 1887, it proved
just as impossible to discover whither the Rev. Ansel Bourne had gone.
Mr. Bourne's lot was cast, not in the sleepy Royalist Bavaria of 1828,
but in the midst of the admired 'hustle' of the great Western
Republic.
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