in full sight of Caspar Hauser. Whenever I turned a
page I would stick my finger between the wires and chirrup encouragingly
to the captive, all with a single eye to getting him used to me. His
speed and staying powers were equally extraordinary, but I was cheered,
when the forenoon was spent and I picked up the cage to take him in, by
observing that he ran more deliberately and with occasional pauses. By
the time I got him upstairs he lay down for a nap. He was still
slumbering at my supper-time, and had not got his nap out when I went to
bed, nor yet when breakfast was eaten and lessons said, next morning.

I had made up my mind by now that he was sick, and carried him into the
garden once more. I had read that wild creatures physic themselves if
allowed to seek such plants as instinct tells them are specifics for
their ailments. Lifting Caspar Hauser from his woolly bed, I stroked him
and called him by name. He was so tame by now that he did not struggle
upon my palm. Only the rise and fall of his furry sides showed that he
was alive. He was limp and helpless, and to me very lovable. I laid him
upon a strip of turf hot with the sunshine that had steeped it for five
hours. He had a liberal choice of healing herbs. Parsley, sage, mint,
tansy, peppergrass, catnip, and sweet marjoram, rue and bergamot and
balsam, flourished within a hundred lengths of his small body. While I
watched him he stretched himself as a baby at awakening, and began to
crawl weakly toward the tansy bed. To save him needless exertion I
pulled a handful of the yellow heads and offered them to his inquisitive
nose. Mam' Chloe had given me tansy tea for a bad cold last winter. It
tasted nasty, but I got well. Instinct had "indicated" tansy to Caspar
Hauser. He refused the panacea dumbly, and made, still feebly, for the
parsley patch. I let him go a yard or more, when, fearing lest he might
lose himself in the maze of luxuriant herbage, I dragged him tenderly
back by the tail to the hot turf.

He had grown so tame that he never moved again.

The funeral took place that afternoon. We buried him next to Musidora. I
had had enough of vaults, regarding them, with reason, as uncertain
places of sepulture for the presumably defunct. I had never heard, or
read, of cremation. I had had the misfortune to break my slate a few
days before, and the biggest fragment made a nice tombstone for Caspar
Hauser. With a nail and with infinite toil I produced a suitable