true, your hopes, like my wishes, are disappointed; but let us be
consoled by the primary thought that we have done what the voice of our
country called upon us to do; that, you knew, is the principle according
to which I have always lived. You will doubtless say among yourselves,
'Yes, thanks to our sacrifices, he had learned to know life and to taste
the joys of earth, and he seemed: deeply to love his native country and
the humble estate to which he was called'. Alas, yes, that is true!
Under your protection, and amid your numberless sacrifices, my native
land and life had become profoundly dear to me. Yes, thanks to you, I
have penetrated into the Eden of knowledge, and have lived the free life
of thought; thanks to you, I have looked into history, and have then
returned to my own conscience to attach myself to the solid pillars of
faith in the Eternal.
"Yes, I was to pass gently through this life as a preacher of the
gospel; yes, in my constancy to my calling I was to be sheltered from
the storms of this existence. But would that suffice to avert the danger
that threatens Germany? And you yourselves, in your infinite lave,
should you not rather push me on to risk my life for the good of all? So
many modern Greeks have fallen already to free their country from the
yoke of the Turks, and have died almost without any result and without
any hope; and yet thousands of fresh martyrs keep up their courage and
are ready to fall in their turn; and should I, then, hesitate to die?
"That I do not recognise your love, or that your love is but a trifling
consideration with me, you will not believe. What else should impel me
to die if not my devotion to you and to Germany, and the need of proving
this devotion to my family and my country?
"You, mother, will say, 'Why have I brought up a son whom I loved and
who loved me, for whom I have undergone a thousand cares and toils, who,
thanks to my prayers and my example, was impressionable to good
influences, and from whom, after my long and weary course, I hoped to
receive attentions like those which I have given him? Why does he now
abandon me?'
"Oh, my kind and tender mother! Yes, you will perhaps say that; but
could not the mother of anyone else say the same, and everything go off
thus in words when there is need to act for the country? And if no one
would act, what would become of that mother of us all who is called
Germany?
"But no; such complaints are far from you, you noble woman! I understood
your appeal once before, and at this present hour, if no one came
forward in the German cause, you yourself would urge me to the fight. I
have two brothers and two sisters before me, all noble and loyal. They
will remain to you, mother; and besides you will have for sons all the
children of Germany who love their country.
"Every man has a destiny which he has to accomplish: mine is devoted to
the action that I am about to undertake; if I were to live another fifty
years, I could not live more happily than I have done lately. Farewell,
mother: I commend you to the protection of God; may He raise you to that
joy which misfortunes can no longer trouble! Take your grandchildren, to
whom I should so much have liked to be a loving friend, to the top of
our beautiful mountains soon. There, on that altar raised by the Lord
Himself in the midst of Germany, let them devote themselves, swearing to
take up the sword as soon as they have strength to lift it, and to lay
it down only when our brethren are all united in liberty, when all
Germans, having a liberal constitution; are great before the Lord,
powerful against their neighbours, and united among themselves.
"May my country ever raise her happy gaze to Thee, Almighty Father! May
Thy blessing fall abundantly upon her harvests ready to be cut and her
armies ready for battle, and recognising the blessings that Thou host
showered upon us, may the German nation ever be first among nations to
rise and uphold the cause of humanity, which is Thy image upon earth!
"Your eternally attached son, brother and friend, "KARL-LUDWIG SAND.
"JENA, the beginning of March, 1819."
Sand, who, as we have said, had at first been taken to the hospital, was
removed at the end of three months to the prison at Mannheim, where the
governor, Mr. G----, had caused a room to be prepared for him. There he
remained two months longer in a state of extreme weakness: his left arm
was completely paralysed; his voice was very weak; every movement gave
him horrible pain, and thus it was not until the 11th of August--that is
to say, five months after the event that we have narrated--that he was
able to write to his family the following letter:--
"MY VERY DEAR PARENTS:--The grand-duke's commission of inquiry informed
me yesterday that it might be possible I should have the intense joy of
a visit from you, and that I might perhaps see you here and embrace
you--you, mother, and some of my brothers and sisters.
"Without being surprised at this fresh proof of your motherly love, I
have felt an ardent remembrance reawaken of the happy life that we spent
gently together. Joy and grief, desire and sacrifice, agitate my heart
violently, and I have had to weigh these various impulses one against
the other, and with the force of reason, in order to resume mastery of
myself and to take a decision in regard to my wishes.
"The balance has inclined in the direction of sacrifice.
"You know, mother, how much joy and courage a look from your eyes, daily
intercourse with you, and your pious and high-minded conversation, might
bring me during my very short time. But you also know my position, and
you are too well acquainted with the natural course of all these painful
inquiries, not to feel as I do, that such annoyance, continually
recurring, would greatly trouble the pleasure of our companionship, if
it did not indeed succeed in entirely destroying it. Then, mother, after
the long and fatiguing journey that you would be obliged to make in
order to see me, think of the terrible sorrow of the farewell when the
moment came to part in this world. Let us therefore abide by the
sacrifice, according to God's will, and let us yield ourselves only to
that sweet community of thought which distance cannot interrupt, in
which I find my only joys, and which, in spite of men, will always be
granted us by the Lord, our Father.
"As for my physical state, I knew nothing about it. You see, however,
since at last I am writing to you myself, that I have come past my first
uncertainties. As for the rest, I know too little of the structure of my
own body to give any opinion as to what my wounds may determine for it.
Except that a little strength has returned to me, its state is still the
same, and I endure it calmly and patiently; for God comes to my help,
and gives me courage and firmness. He will help me, believe me, to find
all the joys of the soul and to be strong in mind. Amen.
"May you live happy!--Your deeply respectful son, "KARL-LUDWIG SAND."
A month after this letter came tender answers from all the family. We
will quote only that of Sand's mother, because it completes the idea
which the reader may have formed already of this great-hearted woman, as
her son always calls her.
"DEAR, INEXPRESSIBLY DEAR KARL,--How Sweet it was to me to see the
writing of your beloved hand after so long a time! No journey would have
been so painful and no road so long as to prevent me from coming to you,
and I would go, in deep and infinite love, to any end of the earth in
the mere hope of catching sight of you.
"But, as I well know both your tender affection and your profound
anxiety for me, and as you give me, so firmly and upon such manly
reflection, reasons against which I can say nothing, and which I can but
honour, it shall be, my well-beloved Karl, as you have wished and
decided. We will continue, without speech, to communicate our thoughts;
but be satisfied, nothing can separate us; I enfold you in my soul, and
my material thoughts watch over you.
"May this infinite love which upholds us, strengthens us, and leads us
all to a better life, preserve, dear Karl, your courage and firmness.
"Farewell, and be invariably assured that I shall never cease to love
you strongly and deeply.
"Your faithful mother, who loves you to eternity."
Sand replied:--
January 1820, from my isle of Patmos. "MY DEAR PARENTS, BROTHERS, AND
SISTERS,--
"In the middle of the month of September last year I received, through
the grand-duke's special commission of inquiry, whose humanity you have
already appreciated, your dear letters of the end of August and the
beginning of September, which had such magical influence that they
inundated me with joy by transporting me into the inmost circle of your
hearts.
"You, my tender father, you write to me on the sixty-seventh anniversary
of your birth, and you bless me by the outpouring of your most tender
love.
"You, my well-beloved mother, you deign to promise the continuance of
your maternal affection, in which I have at all times constantly
believed; and thus I have received the blessings of both of you, which,
in my present position, will exercise a more beneficent influence upon
me than any of the things that all the kings of the earth, united
together, could grant me. Yes, you strengthen me abundantly by your
blessed love, and I render thanks to you, my beloved parents, with that
respectful submission that my heart will always inculcate as the first
duty of a son.
"But the greater your love and the more affectionate your letters, the
more do I suffer, I must acknowledge, from the voluntary sacrifice that
we have imposed upon ourselves in not seeing one another; and the only
reason, my dear parents, why I have delayed to reply to you, was to give
myself time to recover the strength which I have lost.
"You too, dear brother-in-law and dear sister, assure me of your sincere
and uninterrupted attachment. And yet, after the fright that I have
spread among you all, you seem not to know exactly what to think of me;
but my heart, full of gratitude for your past kindness, comforts itself;
for your actions speak and tell me that, even if you wished no longer to
love me as I love you, you would not be able to do otherwise. These
actions mean more to me at this hour than any possible protestations,
nay, than even the tenderest words.
"And you also, my kind brother, you would have consented to hurry with
our beloved mother to the shores of the Rhine, to this place where the
real links of the soul were welded between us, where we were doubly
brothers; but tell me, are you not really here, in thought and in
spirit, when I consider the rich fountain of consolation brought me by
your cordial and tender letter?
"And, you, kind sister-in-law, as you showed yourself from the first, in
your delicate tenderness, a true sister, so I find you again at present.
There are still the same tender relations, still the same sisterly
affection; your consolations, which emanate from a deep and submissive
piety, have fallen refreshingly into the depths of my heart. But, dear
sister-in-law, I must tell you, as well as the others, that you are too
liberal towards me in dispensing your esteem and praises, and your
exaggeration has cast me back face to face with my inmost judge, who has
shown me in the mirror of my conscience the image of my every weakness.
"You, kind Julia, you desire nothing else but to save me from the fate
that awaits me; and you assure me in your own name and in that of you
all, that you, like the others, would rejoice to endure it in my place;
in that I recognise you fully, and I recognise, too, those sweet and
tender relations in which we have been brought up from childhood. Oh, be
comforted, dear Julia; thanks to the protection of God, I promise you:
that it will be easy for me, much easier than I should have thought, to
bear what falls to my lot. Receive, then, all of you, my warm and
sincere thanks for having thus rejoiced my heart.
"Now that I know from these strengthening letters that, like the
prodigal son, the love and goodness of my family are greater on my
return than at my departure, I will, as carefully as possible, paint for
you my physical and moral state, and I pray God to supplement my words
by His strength, so that my letter may contain an equivalent of what
yours brought to me, and may help you to reach that state of calm and
serenity to which I have myself attained.
"Hardened, by having gained power over myself, against the good and ill
of this earth, you knew already that of late years I have lived only for
moral joys, and I must say that, touched by my efforts, doubtless, the
Lord, who is the sacred fount of all that is good, has rendered me apt
in seeking them and in tasting them to the full. God is ever near me, as
formerly, and I find in Him the sovereign principle of the creation of
all things; in Him, our holy Father, not only consolation and strength,
but an unalterable Friend, full of the holiest love, who will accompany
me in all places where I may need His consolations. Assuredly, if He had
turned from me, or if I had turned away my eyes from Him, I should now
find myself very unfortunate and wretched; but by His grace, on the
contrary, lowly and weak creature as I am, He makes me strong and
powerful against whatever can befall me.
"What I have hitherto revered as sacred, what I have desired as good
what I have aspired to as heavenly, has in no respect changed now. And I
thank God for it, for I should now be in great despair if I were
compelled to recognise that my heart had adored deceptive images and
enwrapped itself in fugitive chimeras. Thus my faith in these ideas and
my pure love far them, guardian angels of my spirit as they are,
increase moment by moment, and will go on increasing to my end, and I
hope that I may pass all the more easily from this world into eternity.
I pass my silent life in Christian exaltation and humility, and I
sometimes have those visions from above through which I have, from my
birth, adored heaven upon earth, and which give me power to raise myself
to the Lord upon the eager wings of my prayers. My illness, though long,
painful, and cruel, has always been sufficiently mastered by my will to
let me busy myself to some result with history, positive sciences, and
the finer parts of religious education, and when my suffering became
more violent and for a time interrupted these occupations, I struggled
successfully, nevertheless, against ennui; for the memories of the past,
my resignation to the present, and my faith in the future were rich
enough and strong enough in me and round me to prevent my falling from
my terrestrial paradise. According to my principles, I would never, in
the position in which I am and in which I have placed myself, have been
willing to ask anything for my own comfort; but so much kindness and
care have been lavished upon me, with so much delicacy and
humanity,--which alas! I am unable to return--by every person with whom
I have been brought into contact, that wishes which I should not have
dared to frame in the mast private recesses of my heart have been more
than exceeded. I have never been so much overcome by bodily pains that I
could not say within myself, while I lifted my thoughts to heaven, 'Come
what may of this ray.' And great as these gains have been, I could not
dream of comparing them with those sufferings of the soul that we feel
so profoundly and poignantly in the recognition of our weaknesses and
faults.
"Moreover, these pains seldom now cause me to lose consciousness; the
swelling and inflammation never made great headway, and the fever has
always been moderate, though for nearly ten months I have been forced to
remain lying on my back, unable to raise myself, and although more than
forty pints of matter have come from my chest at the place where the
heart is. No, an the contrary, the wound, though still open, is in a
good state; and I owe that not only to the excellent nursing around me,
but also to the pure blood that I received from you, my mother. Thus I
have lacked neither earthly assistance nor heavenly encouragement. Thus,
on the anniversary of my birth, I had every reason--oh, not to curse the
hour in which I was born, but, on the contrary, after serious
contemplation of the world, to thank God and you, my dear parents, for
the life that you have given me! I celebrated it, on the 18th of
October, by a peaceful and ardent submission to the holy will of God. On
Christmas Day I tried to put myself into the temper of children who are
devoted to the Lord; and with God's help the new year will pass like its
predecessor, in bodily pain, perhaps, but certainly in spiritual joy.
And with this wish, the only one that I form, I address myself to you,
my dear parents, and to you and yours, my dear brothers and sisters.
"I cannot hope to see a twenty-fifth new year; so may the prayer that I
have just made be granted! May this picture of my present state afford
you some tranquillity, and may this letter that I write to you from the
depths of my heart not only prove to you that I am not unworthy of the
inexpressible love that you all display, but, on the contrary, ensure
this love to me for eternity.
"Within the last few days I have also received your dear letter of the
2nd of December, my kind mother, and the grind-duke's commission has
deigned to let me also read my kind brother's letter which accompanied
yours. You give me the best of news in regard to the health of all of
you, and send me preserved fruits from our dear home. I thank you for
them from the bottom of my heart. What causes me most joy in the matter
is that you have been solicitously busy about me in summer as in winter,
and that you and my dear Julia gathered them and prepared them for me at
home, and I abandon my whole soul to that sweet enjoyment.
"I rejoice sincerely at my little cousin's coming into the world; I
joyfully congratulate the good parents and the grandparents; I transport
myself, for his baptism, into that beloved parish, where I offer him my
affection as his Christian brother, and call down on him all the
blessings of heaven.
"We shall be obliged, I think, to give up this correspondence, so as not
to inconvenience the grand-duke's commission. I finish, therefore, by
assuring you, once more, but for the last time, perhaps, of my profound
filial submission and of my fraternal affection.--Your most tenderly
attached "KARL-LUDWIG SAND."
Indeed, from that moment all correspondence between Karl and his family
ceased, and he only wrote to them, when he knew his fate, one more
letter, which we shall see later on.
We have seen by what attentions Sand was surrounded; their humanity
never flagged for an instant. It is the truth, too, that no one saw in
him an ordinary murderer, that many pitied him under their breath, and
that some excused him aloud. The very commission appointed by the
grand-duke prolonged the affair as much as possible; for the severity of
Sand's wounds had at first given rise to the belief that there would be
no need of calling in the executioner, and the commission was well
pleased that God should have undertaken the execution of the judgment.
But these expectations were deceived: the skill of the doctor defeated,
not indeed the wound, but death: Sand did not recover, but he remained
alive; and it began to be evident that it would be needful to kill him.
Indeed, the Emperor Alexander, who had appointed Kotzebue his
councillor, and who was under no misapprehension as to the cause of the
murder, urgently demanded that justice should take its course. The
commission of inquiry was therefore obliged to set to work; but as its
members were sincerely desirous of having some pretext to delay their
proceedings, they ordered that a physician from Heidelberg should visit
Sand and make an exact report upon his case; as Sand was kept lying down
and as he could not be executed in his bed, they hoped that the
physician's report, by declaring it impossible for the prisoner to rise,
would come to their assistance and necessitate a further respite.
The chosen doctor came accordingly to Mannheim, and introducing himself
to Sand as though attracted by the interest that he inspired, asked him
whether he did not feel somewhat better, and whether it would be
impossible to rise. Sand looked at him for an instant, and then said,
with a smile--
"I understand, sir; they wish to know whether I am strong enough to
mount a scaffold: I know nothing about it myself, but we will make the
experiment together."
With these words he rose, and accomplishing, with superhuman courage,
what he had not attempted for fourteen months, walked twice round the
room, came back to his bed, upon which he seated himself, and said:
"You see, sir, I am strong enough; it would therefore be wasting
precious time to keep my judges longer about my affair; so let them
deliver their judgment, for nothing now prevents its execution."
The doctor made his report; there was no way of retreat; Russia was
becoming more and more pressing, and an the 5th of May 1820 the high
court of justice delivered the following judgment, which was confirmed
on the 12th by His Royal Highness the Grand-Duke of Baden:
"In the matters under investigation and after administration of the
interrogatory and hearing the defences, and considering the united
opinions of the court of justice at Mannheim and the further
consultations of the court of justice which declare the accused, Karl
Sand of Wonsiedel, guilty of murder, even on his own confession, upon
the person of the Russian imperial Councillor of State, Kotzebue; it is
ordered accordingly, for his just punishment and for an example that may
deter other people, that he is to be put from life to death by the
sword.
"All the costs of these investigations, including these occasioned by
his public execution, will be defrayed from the funds of the law
department, on account of his want of means."
We see that, though it condemned the accused to death, which indeed
could hardly be avoided, the sentence was both in form and substance as
mild as possible, since, though Sand was convicted, his poor family was
not reduced by the expenses of a long and costly trial to complete ruin.
Five days were still allowed to elapse, and the verdict was not
announced until the 17th. When Sand was informed that two councillors of
justice were at the door, he guessed that they were coming to read his
sentence to him; he asked a moment to rise, which he had done but once
before, in the instance already narrated, during fourteen months. And
indeed he was so weak that he could not stand to hear the sentence, and
after having greeted the deputation that death sent to him, he asked to
sit down, saying that he did so not from cowardice of soul but from
weakness of body; then he added, "You are welcome, gentlemen; far I have
suffered so much for fourteen months past that you come to me as angels
of deliverance."
He heard the sentence quite unaffectedly and with a gentle smile upon
his lips; then, when the reading was finished, he said--
"I look for no better fate, gentlemen, and when, more than a year ago, I
paused on the little hill that overlooks the town, I saw beforehand the
place where my grave would be; and so I ought to thank God and man far
having prolonged my existence up to to-day."
The councillors withdrew; Sand stood up a second time to greet them on
their departure, as he had done on their entrance; then he sat down
again pensively in his chair, by which Mr. G, the governor of the
prison, was standing. After a moment of silence, a tear appeared at each
of the condemned man's eyelids, and ran down his cheeks; then, turning
suddenly to Mr. G----, whom he liked very much, he said, "I hope that my
parents would rather see me die by this violent death than of some slow
and shameful disease. As for me, I am glad that I shall soon hear the
hour strike in which my death will satisfy those who hate me, and those
wham, according to my principles, I ought to hate."
Then he wrote to his family.
"MANNHEIM
"17th of the month of spring, 1820