l this was set on foot cautiously and without delay. The
body was disinterred under an armed guard; the Jews who had collected,
and the Jewish doctor who was called in, declared that a bad blow on
the head, and lastly a fit of insanity, had killed the boy. But the
medical gentlemen gave their opinion, that many indications, the broken
neck and a small round wound on the temple, showed that the boy had
died from a violent blow.

"Thereupon Lazarus Abeles was brought to see the body of his son. He
turned pale and trembled, and was so confused that he remained silent,
and for a good while could not say anything intelligible, nor answer
anything distinctly. At last as the Herr Commissary continued urging
him to say whether he knew the body of the boy, he answered with bent
head and weak voice that it was the body of his son Simon; and when it
was further put to him what was the cause of the wound on the left
temple, he gave a confused and contradictory answer. He was therefore
again taken to prison, but the body of the boy was put into a Christian
coffin, and placed meanwhile in the cellar of the council house. The
_Herren_ commissaries were unwearied in cross-questioning Christians
and Jews. But in spite of all indications, Lazarus, and the women who
were in special custody, Lia, his wife, and Hennele, his cook, were
almost unanimous in their evidence: Simon had not taken flight from his
father's house to become a Christian, but for a long time had been
affected with a disease of the head, and therefore kept in the house;
at last he had felt an extreme repugnance for food, had become subject
to violent fits of insanity, and thus had met with his death. All means
of extracting the truth were unavailing; Lazarus Abeles and the two
only witnesses then known of, remained obstinate.

"One afternoon, the honourable Franz Maximilian Baron von Klarstein,
the official commissary, was reflecting on this matter as he went home,
and ascended the steps of his house; when it suddenly seemed to him
that he received a violent blow on the side, he turned round crossly,
when behold there appeared to him on the landing which divided the
steps from one another, a boy standing, who bowed his head, and smiled
sweetly with cheerful countenance, clothed in a Jewish winding-sheet,
wounded on the left temple, and in size and age like Simon, as this
gentleman had seen him with his own eyes, on inspection of the body,
when a lively image of him had