brief absence with the coach, and the burning of the body, and setting
fire to the room, done when he went out to get his supper. But--how
could the murderer suppose he would leave the house open and unprotected
at eight o'clock? Was it likely that a murderer and robber, after having
killed the Countess and taken her jewels at six o'clock, would hang
about till eight, waiting the chance of getting back to the scene of his
crime unobserved, to attempt to disguise it? not knowing, moreover, how
much time he would have for effecting his purpose?
It was possible that this had been done, but it was not probable.
Evidence was forthcoming from a new quarter that served to establish
the guilt of Stauff.
On October 6, 1847, an oilman, Henry Stauff, in Oberohmen, in Hesse
Cassel, was arrested, because he was found to be disposing of several
articles of jewelry, without being able to give a satisfactory account
of where he got them. The jewelry consisted of a lump of molten gold,
and some brooches, bracelets and rings.
Henry Stauff had been a whitesmith in his youth, then he became a
carrier, but in the last few years, since the death of his wife, he had
sold knives, and been a knife-grinder. He was very poor, and had been
unable to pay his rates. In July of 1847, however, his affairs seemed to
have mended; he wore a silver watch, and took out a licence to deal in
oil and seeds. When he applied for the patent, the burgomaster was
surprised, and asked him how he could get stock to set up business, in
his state of poverty. Thereupon, Henry Stauff opened his purse and
showed that it contained a good amount of silver, and--with the coins
was a gold ring with, apparently, a precious stone in it.
The cause of his arrest was his offering the lump of gold to a
silversmith in Cassel. It looked so much as if it was the melting up of
jewelry, that the smith communicated with the police. On his arrest,
Henry Stauff said he was the father of four children, two sons and two
daughters; that his sons, one of whom was in the army, had sent him
money, that his daughter in America had given him the jewelry, and that
the gold he had had by him for several years, it had been given him by
a widow, who was dead. The silver watch he had bought in Frankfort.
Henry Stauff had a daughter at home, name Anna Margaretta, who often
received letters from Darmstadt. One of these letters had not been
stamped, and as she declined to pay double for it, it lay in the
post-office till opened to be returned. Then it was found to be dated
September 29, 1847, and to be from her brother, John Stauff. It simply
contained an inclosure to her father; this was opened; it contained an
angry remonstrance with him for not having done what he was required,
and sent the money at once to the writer.
Was it possible that this had reference to the disposal of the jewelry?
On July 7, three weeks after the death of the Countess, Henry Stauff was
at Darmstadt, where one son, Jacob, was in the army; the other, John,
was in service with the Goerlitz family.
This led the magistrates in Cassel to communicate with those in
Darmstadt. On November 10, John Stauff was questioned with reference to
his father. He said he had often sent him money. He was shown the
jewelry, and asked if he recognised it. He denied having ever seen it,
and having sent it to his father.
The jewelry was shown to Count Goerlitz, and he immediately identified
it as having belonged to his wife. A former lady's-maid of the Countess
also identified the articles. The Count, and a maid, asserted that these
articles had always been kept by the deceased lady in the small upper
drawers of her secretaire. The Countess was vain and miserly, and often
looked over her jewelry. She would, certainly, have missed her things
had they been stolen before June 13.
The articles had not been stolen since, found among the ashes, and
carried off surreptitiously, for they showed no trace of fire.
Here we must again remark on the extraordinary character of the
proceedings in this case. The articles were identified and shown to John
Stauff on November 10, 1847, but it was not till ten months after, on
August 28, 1848, that he was told that he was suspected of the murder of
the Countess, and of having robbed her of these ornaments. Another of
the eccentricities of the administration of justice in Darmstadt
consisted in allowing the father Henry, and his son John, to have free
private communication with each other, whilst the latter was in prison,
and thus allowing them to concoct together a plausible account of their
conduct, with which, however, we need not trouble ourselves.
On September 1, 1848, on the fourth day after Stauff knew that he was
charged with the murder of the Countess, he asked to make his statement
of what really took place. This was the account he gave. It will be seen
that, from the moment he knew the charge of murder was brought against
him, he altered his defence.
He said, "On June 20, 1847," (that is, a week after the murder), "about
ten o'clock in the evening, after the Count had partaken of his supper
and undressed, he brought me a box containing jewelry, and told me he
would give it to me, as I was so poor, and that it would place my father
and me in comfortable circumstances. I then told the Count that I did
not know what to do with these jewels, whereupon he exhorted me to send
them to my father, and get him to dispose of them. He told me that he
required me solemnly to swear that I would not tell anyone about the
jewels. I hid the box in a stocking and concealed it in some bushes on
the Bessungen road. Later I told my brother Jacob where they were, and
bade him give them to my father on his visit to Darmstadt."
When Stauff was asked what reason he could assign for the Count giving
him the jewels, he said that the Count saw that he, John Stauff,
suspected him of the murder, and he named several circumstances, such as
observing blood on the Count's handkerchief on the evening of the
murder, which had led him to believe that the Count was guilty, and the
Count was aware of his suspicions.
On March 4, 1850, began the trial of John Stauff for the murder of the
Countess, for robbery, for arson, and for attempt to poison the Count.
At the same time his father, Henry Stauff, and his brother, Jacob
Stauff, were tried for concealment of stolen goods. The trial came to an
end on April 11. As many as 118 witnesses were heard; among these was
the Count Goerlitz, as to whose innocence no further doubts were
entertained.
John Stauff was at that time aged twenty-six, he was therefore
twenty-four years old at the time of the murder. He had been at school
at Oberohmen, where he had shown himself an apt and intelligent scholar.
In 1844 he had entered the grand-ducal army, and in May 1846 had become
servant in the Goerlitz house, as footman to the Countess. In his
regiment he had behaved well; he had been accounted an excellent
servant, and both his master and mistress placed confidence in him.
Curiously enough, in the autumn of 1846, he had expressed a wish to a
chambermaid of the Countess "that both the Countess and her pack of
jewels, bracelets and all, might be burnt in one heap."
When the maid heard of the death of the Countess in the following year,
"Ah!" she said, "now Stauff's wish has been fulfilled to the letter."
He was fond of talking of religion, and had the character among his
fellow-servants of being pious. He was, however, deep in debt, and
associated with women of bad character. Throughout the trial he
maintained his composure, his lips closed, his colour pale, without
token of agitation. But the man who could have stood by without showing
emotion at the opening of the coffin of his mistress, at the sight of
the half-burnt, half-decomposed remains of his victim, must have had
powers of self-control of no ordinary description. During the trial he
seemed determined to show that he was a man of some culture; he
exhibited ease of manner and courtesy towards judges, jury, and lawyers.
He never interrupted a witness, and when he questioned them, did so with
intelligence and moderation. He often looked at the public, especially
the women, who attended in great numbers, watching the effect of the
evidence on their minds. When, as now and then happened, some ludicrous
incident occurred, he laughed over it as heartily as the most innocent
looker-on.
The jury unanimously found him "guilty" on every count. They
unanimously gave a verdict of "guilty" against his father and brother.
Henry Stauff was sentenced to six months' imprisonment; Jacob Stauff to
detention for three months, and John to imprisonment for life. At that
time capital punishment could not be inflicted in Hesse.
On June 3, he was taken to the convict prison of Marienschloss. On July
1, he appealed to the Grand-Duke to give him a free pardon, as he was
innocent of the crimes for which he was sentenced. The appeal was
rejected. Then he professed his intention of making full confession. He
asked to see the Count. He professed himself a broken-hearted penitent,
desirous of undoing, by a sincere confession, as much of the evil as was
possible.
We will give his confession in his own words.
"When, at five o'clock, I went to announce to the Countess that I was
about to go to the palace, I found both the glass door of the ante-room,
and that into the sitting-room, open, and I walked in through them. I
did not find the Countess in her parlour, of which the curtains were
drawn. Nor was she in her boudoir. I saw the door into the little corner
room ajar, so I presumed she was in there. The flap of her desk was
down, so that I saw the little drawers, in which I knew she kept her
valuables, accessible to my hand. Opportunity makes the thief. I was
unable to resist the temptation to enrich myself by these precious
articles. I opened one of the drawers, took out a gold bracelet, one of
gold filigree, two of bronze, a pair of gold ear-rings, a gold brooch,
and a triple chain of beads or Roman pearls; and pocketed these
articles, which my father afterwards had, and, for the most part, melted
up.
"Most of these articles were in their cases. At that moment the Countess
appeared on the threshold of her boudoir and rushed towards me. I do not
remember what she exclaimed; fear for the consequences, and anxiety to
prevent the Countess from making a noise and calling assistance, and
thereby obtaining my arrest, prevailed in my mind, and I thought only
how I might save myself. I grasped her by the neck, and pressed my
thumbs into her throat. She struggled desperately. I was obliged to use
all my strength to hold her. After a wrestle of between five and seven
minutes, her eyes closed, her face became purple, and I felt her limbs
relax.
"When I saw she was dead I was overcome with terror. I let the body
fall, whereby the head struck the corner of the left side of the
secretaire, and this made a wound which began to bleed. Then I ran and
locked both the doors, hid what I had taken in my bed, and left the
house. On my way to the palace, I stepped into Frey's tavern and drank
three glasses of wine. I was afraid I should arrive too late at the
palace, where I appeared, however, at half-past five. The Count did not
return till half-past six, as dinner that day lasted rather longer than
usual.
"When the Count went upstairs to see his wife and take her something
good he had brought away with him from table, I was not uneasy at all,
for I knew that he would knock and come away if he met with no response.
So he did. He came down without being discomposed, and remarked that he
fancied the Countess had gone out. At half-past seven he left the house.
In the mean time I had been considering what to do, and had formed my
plan. Now my opportunity had arrived, and I hastened to put it into
execution. My plan was to efface every trace of my deed by fire, and to
commit suicide if interrupted.
"As the weather was chilly, the Count had some fire in his stove. I
fetched the still glowing charcoal, collected splinters of firwood and
other combustibles, and matches, and went upstairs with them. Only the
wine sustained me through what I carried out. I took up the body. I put
a chair before the open desk, seated the corpse on it, placed one arm on
the desk, laid the head on the arm, so that the body reposed in a
position of sleep, leaning on the flap of the desk. I threw the red hot
charcoal down under the head, heaped matches, paper, and wood splinters
over them; took one of the blazing bits of wood and threw it on the
divan in the boudoir; locked both doors, and flung away the keys.
"Then I went to my own room and lighted a fire in the stove, and put the
jewel cases on the fire. The fire would not burn well, and thick smoke
came into the room. Then I saw that the damper was closed. I opened
that, and the smoke flew up the chimney; this is what Colonel von
Stockhausen saw. There were a lot of empty match-boxes also in the
stove, and these burnt with the rest."
Such was the confession of Stauff. How far true, it is impossible to
say. He said nothing about the bell-pull being torn down, nothing about
the holes burnt in the sofa of the sitting-room. According to the
opinion of some experimentalists, the way in which he pretended to have
burnt the Countess would not account for the appearance of the corpse.
His object was to represent himself as the victim of an over-mastering
temptation--to show that the crime was wholly unpremeditated.
This was the sole plea on which he could appeal for sympathy, and expect
a relaxation of his sentence.
That sentence was relaxed.
In 1872 he obtained a free pardon from the Grand-Duke, on condition that
he left the country and settled in America. Including his imprisonment
before his trial, he had, therefore, undergone twenty-five years of
incarceration.
When released he went to America, where he probably still is.
A War-and-Honey-Moon.
In the history of Selenography, John Henry Maedler holds a distinguished
place. He was the very first to publish a large map of the lunar
surface; and his map was a good one, very accurate, and beautifully
executed, in four sheets (1834-6). For elucidation of this map he wrote
a book concerning the moon, entitled "The Universal Selenography." Not
content with this, he published a second map of the moon in 1837,
embodying fresh discoveries. Indeed as an astronomer, Maedler was a
specialist. Lord Dufferin when in Iceland met a German naturalist who
had gone to that inclement island to look for one moth. It is of the
nature of Teutonic scientific men not to diffuse their interests over
many branches of natural history or other pursuits, but to focus them on
a single point. Maedler was comparatively indifferent to the planets,
cold towards the comets, and callous to the attractions of the nebulæ.
On the subject of the moon, he was a sheer lunatic.
He died at Hanover in 1874 at the age of eighty, a moon gazer to the
last. Indeed, he appeared before the public as the historian of that
science in a work published at Brunswick, the year previous to his
death. The study of astronomy, more than any other,--even than
theology--detaches a man from the world and its interests. Indeed
theology as a study has a tendency to ruffle a man, and make him bark
and snap at his fellow men who use other telescopes than himself; it is
not so with astronomy. This science exercises a soothing influence on
those who make it their study, so that an Adams and a Le Verrier can
simultaneously discover a Neptune without flying at each other's noses.
Astronomy is certainly an alluring science; set an astronomer before a
telescope, and an overwhelming attraction draws his soul away through
the tube up into heaven, and leaves his body without mundane interests.
An astronomer is necessarily a mathematician, and mathematics are the
hardest and most petrifying of studies. The "humane letters," as classic
studies are called, draw out the human interests, they necessarily carry
men among men, but mathematics draw men away from all the interests of
their fellows. The last man one expects to find in love, the last man in
whose life one looks for a romantic episode, is a mathematician and
astronomer. But as even Cæsar nods, so an astronomer may lapse into
spooning. The life of Professor Maedler does not contain much of
animated interest; but it had its poetic incident. The curious story of
his courtship and marriage may be related without indiscretion, now that
the old Selenographer is no more.
Even the most prosaic of men have their time of poetry. The swan is said
to sing only once--just before it dies. The man of business--the
stockbroker, the insurance-company manager, the solicitor, banker, the
ironmonger, butcher, greengrocer, postman, have all passed through a
"moment," as Hegel would call it, when the soul burst through its rind
of common-place and vulgar routine, sang its nightingale song, and then
was hushed for ever after. It is said that there are certain flowers
which take many years coming to the point of bloom, they open, exhale a
flood of incense, and in an hour wither. It is so with many. Even the
astronomer has his blooming time. Then, after the honeymoon, the flower
withers, the song ceases, the sunshine fades, and folds of the fog of
common-place settle deeper than before.
Ivan Turgenieff, the Russian novelist, says of love, "It is not an
emotion, it is a malady, attacking soul and body. It is developed
without rule, it cannot be reckoned with, it cannot be overreached. It
lays hold of a man, without asking leave, like a fever or the cholera.
It seizes on its prey as a falcon on a dove, and carries it, where it
wills. There is no equality in love. The so-termed free inclination of
souls towards each other is an idle dream of German professors, who have
never loved. No! of two who love, one is the slave, the other is the
lord, and not inaccurately have the poets told of the chains of love."
But love when it does lay hold of a man assumes some features congruent
to his natural habit. It is hardly tempestuous in a phlegmatic
temperament, nor is a man of sanguine nature liable to be much
influenced by calculations of material advantages. That calculations
should form a constituent portion of the multiform web of a
mathematician's passion is what we might anticipate.
It will be interesting to see in a German professor devoted to the
severest, most abstract and super-mundane of studies, the appearance,
course, and dying away of the "malady" of love. We almost believe that
this case is so easy of analysis that the very _bacillus_ may be
discovered.
Before, however, we come to the story of Professor Maedler's love
episode, we must say a word about his previous history.
Maedler was born at Berlin on May 29th, 1794, in the very month of love,
though at its extreme end. He began life as a schoolmaster, but soared
in his leisure hours into a purer atmosphere than that of the
schoolroom; he began to study the stars, and found them brighter and
more interesting than the heads of his pupils.
In 1828 William Beer, the Berlin banker, brother of the great composer,
Meyerbeer, a Jew, built a small observatory in the suburbs of Berlin. He
had made the acquaintance of Maedler, they had the same love of the
stars, and they became close friends.
The Beers were a gifted family, running out in different directions.
Michael, a third brother, was a poet, and wrote tragedies, one or two of
which occasionally reappear on the boards.
The result of the nightly star gazings was an article on Mars when in
opposition, with a drawing of the surface as it appeared to Beer and
Maedler, through the telescope of the former.
But Mars did not admit of much further scrutiny, it presented no more
problems they were capable of solving, so they devoted themselves to the
moon. A gourmand exists from dinner to dinner, that meal is the climax
of his vitality, that past he lapses into inertness, indifference,
quiescence. Full moon was the exciting moment of the periods in
Maedler's life, which was divided, not like a gourmand's day, into
periods of twenty-four hours, but into lunar months. When the moon began
to show, Maedler began to live; his interest, the pulses of his life
quickened as full moon approached, then declined and went to sleep when
there was no lunar disc in the sky. From 1834 to 1836 he issued his
great map of the moon, and so made his name. But beyond that, in the
summer of 1833 he was employed by the Russian Government on a
chronometrical expedition in the Baltic.
When his map came out, he was at once secured by the Prussian Government
as assistant astronomer to the observatory at Berlin, recently erected.
In 1840 he became a professor, and was summoned to take charge of the
observatory, and lecture on astronomy, in the Russian University of
Dorpat. There he spent six uneventful years. He was unmarried,
indifferent to female society, and as cold as his beloved moon. He was
as solitary, as far removed from the ideas of love and matrimony, as the
Man in the Moon.
At last, one vacation time, he paid a long deferred visit to a friend, a
Selenologist, at Gröningen, the University of the Kingdom of Hanover.
Whilst smoking, drinking beer, and talking over the craters and luminous
streaks in the moon, with his friend, who was also a professor, that
gentleman drew his pipe from his mouth, blew a long spiral from between
his lips, and then said slowly, "By the way, professor, are you aware
that we have here, in this kingdom, not, indeed, in Gröningen, but in
the town of Hanover, a lady, the wife of the Herr Councillor Witte, who
is, like yourself, devoted to the moon; a lady, who spends entire nights
on the roof of her house peering at the face of the moon through one
end--the smaller--of her telescope, observing all the prominences,
measuring their altitudes, and sounding all the cavities. Indeed, it is
asserted that she studies the face and changes of the moon much more
closely than the features and moods of her husband. Also, it is
asserted, that when the moon is shining, the household duties are
neglected, the dinners are bad, the maids--"
"O dinners! maids! you need not consider them; there are always dinners
and maids," said the Dorpat astronomer contemptuously, "but the moon is
seen so comparatively rarely. The moon must be made much of when she
shows. Everything must then be sacrificed to her."
Dr. Maedler did not call the moon _she_, but _he_; however, we are
writing in English, not in German, so we change the gender.
The Astronomer Royal of the University of Gröningen went on, without
noticing the interruption: "Frau von Witte has spent a good deal of her
husband's money in getting the largest procurable telescope, and has
built an observatory for it with a dome that revolves on cannon balls,
on the top of her house. Whilst Herr von Witte slumbers and snores
beneath, like a Philistine, his enlightened lady is aloft, studying the
moon. The Frau Councilloress has done more than observe Luna, she has
done more than you and Beer together, with your maps--she has modelled
it."
"Modelled it!--modelled the moon!--in what?"
"In white wax."
Professor Maedler's countenance fell. He had gained great renown, not in
Germany only, but throughout Europe by his maps of the moon. Here was an
unknown lady, as enthusiastic a devotee to the satellite as himself, who
had surpassed him. "You see," continued the Hanoverian professor, "the
idea is superb, the undertaking colossal. You have a fixed strong light,
you make the wax moon to revolve on its axis, and you reproduce in the
most surprising and exact manner, all the phases of the moon itself."
This was indeed an idea. Maedler looked at his hands, his fingers. Would
they be capable of modelling such a globe? Hardly, he had very broad
coarse hands, and thick flat fingers, like paddles. He suddenly stood
up.
"What is the matter? Whither are you going?" asked his friend.
"To Hanover, to Frau Witte, to see the wax moon." No persuasion would
restrain him, he was in a selenological fever, he could not sleep, he
could not eat, he could not read, he must see the wax moon.
And now, pray observe the craft of Cupid. The professor was aged
fifty-two. In vain had the damsels of Berlin and Dorpat set their caps
at him. Not a blonde beauty of Saxon race with blue eyes had caught his
fancy, not a dark Russian with large hazel eyes and thick black hair,
had arrested his attention. His heart had been given to the cold, chaste
Diana. It was, with him, the reverse of the tale of Endymion.