lly been destroyed. The three reached a hotel at
Cologne, where the baroness had just arrived. Her luggage, in fact, was
being carried upstairs. One of Lassalle's friends opened a trunk, and,
finding a casket there, slipped it out to his companion, the judge.

Unfortunately, the latter had no means of hiding it, and when the
baroness's servant shouted for help, the casket was found in the
possession of the judge, who could give no plausible account of it. He
was, therefore, arrested, as were the other two. There was no evidence
against Lassalle; but his friends fared badly at the trial, one of them
being imprisoned for a year and the other for five years.

From this time Lassalle, with an almost quixotic devotion, gave himself
up to fighting the Countess von Hatzfeldt's battle against her husband
in the law-courts. The ablest advocates were pitted against him. The
most eloquent legal orators thundered at him and at his client, but he
met them all with a skill, an audacity, and a brilliant wit that won
for him verdict after verdict. The case went from the lower to the
higher tribunals, until, after nine years, it reached the last court of
appeal, where Lassalle wrested from his opponents a magnificently
conclusive victory--one that made the children of the countess
absolutely safe. It was a battle fought with the determination of a
soldier, with the gallantry of a knight errant, and the intellectual
acumen of a learned lawyer.

It is not surprising that many refuse to believe that Lassalle's
feeling toward the Countess von Hatzfeldt was a disinterested one. A
scandalous pamphlet, which was published in French, German, and
Russian, and written by one who styled herself "Sophie Solutzeff," did
much to spread the evil report concerning Lassalle. But the very
openness and frankness of the service which he did for the countess
ought to make it clear that his was the devotion of a youth drawn by an
impulse into a strife where there was nothing for him to gain, but
everything to lose. He denounced the brutality of her husband, but her
letters to him always addressed him as "my dear child." In writing to
her he confides small love-secrets and ephemeral flirtations--which he
would scarcely have done, had the countess viewed him with the eye of
passion.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of impressionable heart, and had many
affairs such as Heine had; but they were not deep or lasting. That he
should have made a favorable impress