It happened once that a band of gipsies, who at that time roved about
in Germany with little molestation, came to these parts. The nobles of
the country as well as the government were undecided and dilatory in
checking this nuisance, and the boundaries of several states meeting
here, the tribe could carry on their depredations with impunity and
even unnoticed. Where they did not receive any thing, they robbed;
where they were resisted they came at night and burnt the barns; and in
this manner the fire on one occasion rapidly spreading, two villages
were burnt to the ground. Count Moritz was induced by this
circumstance to unite with some resolute neighbours, and to pursue and
punish, on his own authority, the lawless tribe. Imprisonment,
scourging, flogging, and starvation, were awarded by him without
reference to any authority, and only some who were convicted of arson
were sent to the town for what was called the gipsy trial, and were
then legally condemned to suffer capital punishment.

The count considering himself the benefactor of his country, could not
help feeling mortified when his enviers and calumniators used this very
circumstance to accuse him of the blackest crimes, and the most
atrocious injustice. To this ingratitude he opposed nothing but calm
indignation, and a contempt which was perhaps too magnanimous; for if a
nobleman always preserves silence, calumny and falsehood will be more
readily believed by the foolish and those who have no character to
lose. If he could not prevail on himself to meet his opponents and to
relate the circumstance in detail, he felt himself quite disarmed on
discovering how much he was misunderstood in his family, and by the
being who was nearest to his heart. He had married late in life, and
his wife having a few days before presented him with a son, was still
confined to her room. In her present weak state he could not dispute
or urge with any force the justice of his proceedings, when she
reproached him with the cruelty he had exercised towards these poor
innocent men, who rather deserved his compassion than such hard
persecution. When on leaving her chamber some old cousins told him the
same thing in plainer terms, he could no longer suppress his rage, and
his replies were so wrathful, his curses so vehement, the gestures of
the irritated man so superhuman, that the old prattling women lost
their composure and almost swooned. To prevent his sick wife from
learni