LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1487, 21 November 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM. By the Author of " A Strange Witness," Hands and Hearts, &c. (Continued.) Then, by a mot Bidden transition, the man of a< ience, the c dm student of Nature, the impassive wielder of the searching scalpel, took the place of the tender, arutely suffering, bitterly bereaved friend. He curiously examined the place where the smashing- blow had fallen ; th n, turning to the professor and physicians around he exclaimed, almost exulitingly, 'This is a great consolation indeed 1 He could not have suffered even one brief instant's pain. Before the startled nerves could possibly have carried the feeling of the fatal blow to the great centre of consciousness, that ci ntre itself must have been dead to all impression from without You see, gentlemen, this is a blow such as I have long been endeavoring to recommend for all purposes of slaying when slaying is absolutely needed. You may s-ie here how much more merciful snch a life-annihilating lightning blow as this must be than even decapitation by the guillotine, where there is always the horrid reflection that the brain may continue to feel and to suffer until the last drops of the fluid of life have run out of the severed veins. Our own method of execution by axe or sword is simply horrible, and hanging is positively beastly. N■,no ; the hammer for me, my own broad faced hammer, which I decidedly must again petition the town council to adopt in the city slaughterhouse.' It was ghastly to listen to the man now set off riding at full speed on his hohby ; but every one present felt that it wai a merci f ul thing for him, as it obliterated, for the time being at least, all thoughts of grief and sorrow, and changed the so dearly beloved, and just a brii f moment before so bitterly bewailed, friend into a mere "sub ject " to hang a lecture on upon the easiest and most painless mode of death ! Professor Tauber was what the Germans ca'l a ' Sonderling.' He was an odd fish indeed, most whimsical in most of his ways and notions, but wonderfully tender-hearted and, with all his great learning, simple as a child. He was a small weakly man, with a highly intellectual face and fine piercing eyes, with a shght dash of wildness in them He was emthatioally a philanthropist, a glorious combination of a Monthyon and a Howard. It is related of the latter that hiphilanthropic charity began abroad and stopped there, never entering his home with him Of the professor's it might be said that it began everywhere and stopped nowh re. He could never bear the sight of suffering His wide heart and his benevolent feelings embraced all living natnre. He would save a wasp from a wa'cy grave, even at the imminent r'n-k of being stung for his pains by the unre'Suning ins ct When he found that rescne came too late to prove effectual, he would at least put an e- d to the creature's suffering by crushing it without a moment's delay. With him it was an unassailable axiom that li f e was not the supremest good, but, that suffering was the greatest of all evils. To the aboli ion of suffering, therefore, he devoted all his energies. Vivisection w l ich was then just beginning to crop up rather luxuriantly, was combated by him with fiercest indignation. He st >utly maintained that none of its results or any of the deductions and inferences to be drawn therefrom, could ever be of the least practical use to the cause of true science, whilst its pursuit must inevitably tend to produce a race of demons on th'< earth. In his uncompromising protective love of all creatures he would even set the laws of na'ure at naught. He would engage in fierce fights with cats, to snatch unhappy captured nice fr m their jaws. The people of the house where'he lived suspected him. and justly so, of setting rats free from the trap in which they had been caught It was seriously averred of him that he never k lied a flea, and some jokers would have it th »t ho could not make up his mind even to crush a bug, but that he preferred gathering thes* interesting pests in paper boxes, to take them to bis friends' houses, and let them run lo- se there. Thoroughly sincere in his convictions, he was a strict vegeta ian Whilst fully admitting the logical right of society to remove cankered or gangrened members, he insisted most strenuously that such removal should invariably be effected in the most absolutely painless way. He was always striving to invent; new and improved methods of slaying with the instantaneousness of lightning. But this was not the only, nor perhaps even the paramount, craze which swayed the professor's and deeds in life; he was a bibliomariac -a fanatical bibliomaniac. His pasdon for rare old books and manuscripts was positively fierce and all-absorb-ing. H ; s father had left him a fine estate and much hard cash, which, both cash and estate, had long, long been engulfed in the insatiate mass of his great library collection. His lecture hall was always crowded to suffocation, and his income was correspond ingly large ; yet he lived and dressed almost as meanly as the poorest day laborer, stinting himself even of the commoa necessaries of life, and sordidly descending to accept the cast off clothes of some of his wealthy auditors Bo ks were everything to him He entertained a most exaggerated notion of their intrinsic valu«. Ac ording to him the real life of the world had begun with the invention of printing. The lives of men and women he held of not the least use or avail except in so fa" as they had either written books or, in their a<ts aad d°eds furnished materials for bodes. ' Liber—homo was his motto; in his extravagant estimati n of the worth of the pet objects of bis fanatical passi'-n he would dari gly affirm that it was better a million human beings should be swept off the surface of the earth than a sing e good book should ever perish. Well, all men have their crotchets and foibleß, and the poor professor's were, aft: r all, harmleps to his fellow creatures. His Hndncss and gentleness made him a general favorit" with all classes, and his vast learning insured him a hearty welcome to the houses and tables of the wealthy. The Saxon police in those days were, what they may be indeed said to continue to be to the present day, solid honest, painstaking, but rather heavy and dull, men. The bright idea, that the best and readiest way to catch a thief is set another th'ef to catch him, which unde> lies the much vaunted French police system, has, even to this present day not yet quite forced i s way to the innermost chambers of the dense Teutonic brain. Besides, it must fa ; rlv be admitted thatev n a Vidoeq with all his concentrated rascality intensified tenfold, would have been sorely puzzled to find in the ascertaiued most scanty and fragmentary facts of the ca°e, or in the likely inferences to be drawn therefrom, a pr musing clue to the mystery ci the murder of Birm von Hohen-ck.

Had these good Faxons been imbued with the spirit of ano'her certain famous police foive they would of o urse at once have set their ' wits ' to work to constrict, even out of the slender materials supplied by the investigati n, some theory or other, the impr>bal>le, or even impossible, the better, which they would then incontinently have proceeded to adapt to the first unlucky wayfarer likely to puit, who would have found hmeelf laid by the honl- in the twinkling of an eye unon the capital chaise. But police natur« happens to be rather imperf ct in the land of Saxony, and is especially defeotivein the det otive line So the nhief oommissary of the Leipzig f rce. who hail conducted the inquiry in Rosenau Park, did not think it incumbent upon him to prove his " active zeal and intelligence" by pouncing down upon innocent people, and indulging in the highly recreative sport of compelling them to prove their innocence. He contented himself .accordingly -with simply reporting the case, to the bf-st of his knowledge and ability, to the high Criminal Court of Ltipzig. # * # # » Time passed on without any new or additional light coming to be thrown on the

case, and the horrible mystery of the Rosenau Park murder faded gradually away from public ken and remembrance, except in so far as the more intimate friends of the unhappy family were cncerned, more especially poor Professor Tauber, who, however, successfully turned the 8»A affair to the best acount i«i the funheranoe of his own ph'lautbropio views on killing. The learned man devised an admirable new slaying hammer for the city slaughter-house of " eipzig—a broad faced swinging hammer of half a tin's weight, properly set and adjusted over the fathest end of a narrow platform. Fresh bav, clover, or some other cattlish d< lioauy was strewn in libeial profusion over this farthest end. The beast to be slaught ret, attracted by the inviting disb, would eagerly advance along the platform, where the weight of its body would set free the suspended hammer, which would sweep down with an irresistible swing, smashing in the animal's head before the creature could possibly realise the fact or suffer the least sensation of pain. ***** On the 23rd day of March, 1822, at about nine o'clo k of the morning, Johann Vogel, a Leipzig postman, knocked at the outer door of an apartment, occupied by the widow Hartmann, on the Becond floor of the medieval house at the corner of the Reichs Strasse and Grimmaisohe Strasse, in which the indulgences monger, John Tetzel, was born. He had several letters for the widow and was enjoying in anticipation one of th'>se g'asses of ratafia to which the estimable lady was in the habit of treating him whenever he called upon her on business To-day he waitel in vain for the widow's brisk cheery invitation to come in. He knocked again; but all remained still wi'hin. Postmen have not much time to spare. Johann Vogel opeDed the door without further ceremony. He was horrified to see the widow Hartmann lying at full length upon the floor—motionless, lifeless. He at once gave the alarm, and in five minutes tbe apartment was crowded with awe-struck people. The nearest commissary of police was sent for. He and two physioans were speedily in attendance It was soon ascer'ained that the widow Hartmann had been dead for more than twelve hours. She had been murdered, strange to s*y, precisely in the same manner as the Baron von Hoheneck; the right temporal bone had been literally smashed in. The murdered woman had been wealthy. She had for many years kept a sort of leaving place; that is to say, she had lent money to respeetable people in a position to valuable p edges behind. Some ten thousand thalers' worth of such pledges were found intact in her safes, cupboards, and drawers, be-ides fifteen thousand thalers in negotiable securities, and five thousand thalers in silver. Nothing whatever seemed to have been d'sturbrd in the apartment. On the afternoon before, between five and six o'clock, Mrs Hartmann had been visi ed by Profrssor Tauber accompanied by Dr. Sengewald, the ''urator of the museum, and Dr. Tholuc* of Ha le. She ha I a rare old Bible on which '! auber had set his mind. He had brought the other two great guns of learning along with him that he m ght n>t be taken in too alarmingly by the shrewd old woman. As it was. he had been obliged to pay seventy thalers, which were indeed found wrapped up in a separate parcel, daly labelled by deceased. The three geutlemen bad" left Mrs Hartmann a little after six o'clock. They had gone on to Auerbach's cellar, 'where they lad caroused till after, eleven o'clock at night. No one had seen the widow Hartmann alive after the 6 e gentlemen had left her. No mortal eye had rested on her save the assa-isi 's. According to the medical experts she must have been murdered about halfpast seven or eight in the evening. This fresh muraer, perpetrated in the same mysterious way as that of the Baron von Hoheneck had been the year before, crea f rd the wildest excitement and t«rror in Leipzig, and indeed throughout Saxony, he head of the Dresden police came expressly over from the capital to conduct the inquiry iuto the horrible busin< ss in person. This high oflßc al worked hard and with a will to fiud a clue; he brought all bis acumen to bear upon the proceedings. The people in the neighborhood of the scene of the crime examined again and again, and Taub r, Sengewald, and Tholuck had a hard life of it indeed, but all to no purpose. The Tetzelhou-»e murder, as it soon came to be called, remained as much shrouded in mystery as the Rosenau Park affair. * * * * #

Time again passed on, and the excitement died gradually away, it wai in 1823, in the third week, or pay week, of the Jubilate H'air, Gotthold Augu t Besser of Altenburg, a large manufacturer of woollen stuffs, had taken a vault and lodging in Auerbachs Hof. On the Thursday of the third week all pay ments are usually completed. On the evenins; of that day Mr Besser made up his accounts and packed his trunks, intending to leave for his home next morning. Young Frederick Frege, a partner in the banking house of Frege and Co , who was distantly related to Besser, called upon him at his lodgings in Auerbachs Hof, to invite him to tako a bottle of wine at the Ilathswage Cellar. Here they met Professor Tauber, who was asked by Frege to join them. At about nine o'clock they left the wine-cellar. After seeing the professor to the door of his modest dwelling in the Katharinen Strasse, Frege took leave of Besser and went home to his house in the Bruhl.