g,
intending to sally out by the New Gate, when he saw a young peasant,
standing in an attitude suggestive of intoxication, and apparently
suffering from locomotor ataxia, 'unable to govern fully the movements
of his legs.' The citizen went to the boy, who showed him a letter
directed to the captain of a cavalry regiment. The gallant captain
lived near the New Gate (654 paces from the citizen's house), and
thither the young peasant walked with the citizen. So he _could_
'govern fully the movements of his legs.' At the house, the captain
being out, the boy said, 'I would be a horseman as my father was,'
also 'Don't know.' Later he was taken to the prison, up a steep hill,
and the ascent to his room was one of over ninety steps. Thus he could
certainly walk, and when he spoke of himself he said 'I' like other
people. Later he took to speaking of himself as 'Kaspar,' in the
manner of small children, and some hysterical patients under
hypnotism. But this was an after-thought, for Kaspar's line came to be
that he had only learned a few words, like a parrot, words which he
used to express all senses indifferently. His eye-sight, when he first
appeared, seems to have been normal, at the prison he wrote his own
name as 'Kaspar Hauser,' and covered a sheet of paper with writing.
Later he could see best in the dark.

So says Feuerbach, in 1832. What he does not say is whence he got his
information as to Kaspar's earliest exploits. Now our earliest
evidence, on oath, before a magistrate, is dated November 4, 1829.
George Weichmann, shoemaker (Feuerbach's anonymous 'citizen'), then
swore that, on May 26, 1828, he saw Kaspar, not making paralysed
efforts to walk, but trudging down a hilly street, shouting 'Hi!' ('or
any loud cry'), and presently asking, 'with tolerable distinctness,'
'New Gate Street?' He took the boy that way, and the boy gave him the
letter for the captain. Weichmann said that they had better ask for
him at the New Gate Guard House, and the boy said 'Guard House? Guard
House? New Gate no doubt just built?' He said he came from Ratisbon,
and was in Nuremberg for the first time, but clearly did not
understand what Weichmann meant when he inquired as to the chances of
war breaking out. In May 1834 Weichmann repeated his evidence as to
Kaspar's power of talking and walking, and was corroborated by one
Jacob Beck, not heard of in 1829. On December 20, 1829, Merk, the
captain's servant, spoke to Kaspar's fatigue, 'he r