THE ECHOES OF MURDER
Next morning Nuremberg was agitated with a horror such as can seldom have disturbed its quiet; a young and lovely girl had been murdered.Her corpse was discovered at daybreak under the archway leading to the old fortifications.She had been stabbed to the heart.No other signs of violence were visible; no robbery had been attempted.
In great cities, necessarily great centers of crime, we daily hear of murders; their frequency and remoteness leave us undisturbed.
Our sympathies can only be deeply moved either by some scenic peculiarities investing the crime with unusual romance or unusual atrocity, or else by the more immediate appeal of direct neighborly interest.The murder which is read of in the Times as having occurred in Westminster, has seldom any special horror to the inhabitants of Islington or Oxford Street; but to the inhabitants of Westminster, and especially to the inhabitants of the particular street in which it was perpetrated, the crime assumes heart-shaking proportions.Every detail is asked for, and every surmise listened to, with feverish eagerness is repeated and diffused through the crowd with growing interest.The family of the victim; the antecedents of the assassin, if he is known; or the conjectures pointing to the unknown assassin,--are eagerly discussed.All the trivial details of household care or domestic fortunes, all the items of personal gossip, become invested with a solemn and affecting interest.Pity for the victim and survivors mingle and alternate with fierce cries for vengeance on the guilty.The whole street becomes one family, commingled by an energetic sympathy, united by one common feeling of compassion and wrath.
In villages, and in cities so small as Nuremberg, the same community of feeling is manifested.The town became as one street.
The horror spread like a conflagration, the sympathy surged and swelled like a tide.Everyone felt a personal interest in the event, as if the murder had been committed at his own door.Never shall I forget that wail of passionate pity, and that cry for the vengeance of justice, which rose from all sides of the startled city.Never shall I forget the hurry, the agitation, the feverish restlessness, the universal communicativeness, the volunteered services, the eager suggestion, surging round the house of the unhappy parents.Herr Lehfeldt, the father of the unhappy girl, was a respected burgher known to almost every one.His mercer's shop was the leading one of the city.A worthy, pious man, somewhat strict, but of irreproachable character; his virtues, no less than those of his wife, and of his only daughter, Lieschen--now, alas; for ever snatched from their yearning eyes--were canvassed everywhere, and served to intensify the general grief.
That such a calamity should have fallen on a household so estimable, seemed to add fuel to the people's wrath.Poor Lieschen! her pretty, playful ways--her opening prospects, as the only daughter of parents so well to do and so kind--her youth and abounding life--these were detailed with impassioned fervor by friends, and repeated by strangers who caught the tone of friends, as if they, too, had known and loved her.But amidst the surging uproar of this sea of many voices no one clear voice of direction could be heard; no clue given to the clamorous bloodhounds to run down the assassin.
Cries had been heard in the streets that night at various parts of the town, which, although then interpreted as the quarrels of drunken brawlers, and the conflicts of cats, were now confidently asserted to have proceeded from the unhappy girl in her death-struggle.But none of these cries had been heard in the immediate neighborhood of the archway.All the inhabitants of that part of the town agreed that in their waking hours the streets had been perfectly still.Nor were there any traces visible of a struggle having taken place.Lieschen might have been murdered elsewhere, and her corpse quietly deposited where it was found, as far as any evidence went.
Wild and vague were the conjectures.All were baffled in the attempt to give them a definite direction.The crime was apparently prompted by revenge--certainly not by lust, or desire of money.But she was not known to stand in any one's way.In this utter blank as to the assignable motive, I, perhaps alone among the furious crowd, had a distinct suspicion of the assassin.No sooner had the news reached me, than with the specification of the theater of the crime there at once flashed upon me the intellectual vision of the criminal: the stranger with the dark beard and startled eyes stood confessed before me! I held my breath for a few moments, and then there came a tide of objections rushing over my mind, revealing the inadequacy of the grounds on which rested my suspicions.What were the grounds? I had seen a man in a particular spot, not an unfrequented spot, on the evening of the night when the crime had been committed there; that man had seemed to recognize me, and wished to avoid being recognized.Obviously these grounds were too slender to bear any weight of construction such as I had based on them.Mere presence on the spot could no more inculpate him than it could inculpate me; if I had met him there, equally had he met me there.Nor even if my suspicion were correct that he knew me, and refused to recognize me, could that be any argument tending to criminate him in an affair wholly disconnected with me.Besides, he was walking peaceably, openly, and he looked like a gentleman.All these objections pressed themselves upon me, and kept me silent.But in spite of their force I could not prevent the suspicion from continually arising.
