other. The boy carried
this letter to the Countess; and Lassalle relates that, finding the lady
in tears, he persuaded her to a full disclosure of the facts. He pledged
himself to save her, and for nine years carried on the struggle, with
ultimate victory, but with considerable loss of reputation. He first
told the story to Mendelssohn and Oppenheim, two friends of great wealth,
the latter a Judge of one of the superior courts in Prussia. They agreed
to help him; for then, as always, Lassalle's persuasive powers were
irresistible. They went with him from Berlin to Dusseldorf, the Count
being in that neighbourhood. Von Hatzfeldt was at Aix-la-Chapelle,
caught in the toils of a new mistress, the Baroness Meyendorff. Lassalle
discovered that she had obtained from the Count a deed assigning to her
some property which should in the ordinary course have come to the boy
Paul. The Countess, hearing of the disaster which seemed likely to
befall her favourite son, made her way into her husband's presence, and
in the scene which followed secured a promise that the document should be
revoked--destroyed. But no sooner had she left him than the Count
returned to the Meyendorff influence, and refused to see his wife again.
Soon afterwards it was discovered that the woman had set out for Cologne.
Lassalle begged his friends Oppenheim and Mendelssohn, to follow her and,
if possible, to ascertain whether the momentous document had actually
been destroyed. They obeyed, and reached the hotel at Cologne about the
same time as the Baroness. Here they were guilty of an indiscretion, if
of nothing worse, for which Lassalle can surely in no way be blamed, but
which was used for many a year to tarnish his name. Oppenheim, on his
way upstairs, observed a servant with the luggage of the Baroness; among
other things a desk or casket of a kind commonly used to carry valuable
papers. Thinking only of the fact that it was desirable to obtain a
certain document from the brutal Count, he pounced upon the casket when
the servant's back was turned. But he had no luggage with him in which
to conceal it, and so handed it to Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn, although
fully sensible of the blunder that had been committed, could not desert
his friend, and placed the casket in his trunk.

The whole hotel was in an uproar when the Baroness discovered her loss.
The friends fled panic-stricken in opposite directions. Suspicion
immediately fell upon Dr. Mend