elssohn, because his room was seen to have
been left in confusion. He was pursued, but succeeded in escaping from a
railway carriage and fleeing to Paris, leaving his luggage in the hands
of the police. In his box some papers were found which incriminated
Oppenheim; and Oppenheim, a Judge of one of the superior courts, and the
son of a millionaire, was arrested and imprisoned for theft!

Lassalle visited Oppenheim in prison, and extracted from him a promise of
silence as to the motive for his conduct. He then threw himself
vigorously into the struggle, both in the press and in the law courts.
Here he seems to have parted company with Heine, because, as he tells us,
"the Baroness Meyendorff was a friend of the Princess de Lieven, and the
Princess de Lieven was the mistress of Guizot, and Heine received a
pension from Guizot."

Oppenheim was acquitted in 1846, and Mendelssohn, who was really innocent
of the actual robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to Germany. He
was, however, tried before the assize court of Cologne, and sentenced to
five years' imprisonment. Alexander von Humboldt obtained a reduction of
the sentence to one year, but on condition that Mendelssohn should leave
Europe. He went, after his release from prison, to Constantinople, and
when the Crimean war broke out joined the Turkish army, dying on the
march in 1854.

Meanwhile Germany rang for many years with the story of the so-called
robbery, and Lassalle's name was even more associated therewith than were
those of his more culpable friends. And this was not unnatural, because
he was engaged year after year in continuous warfare with Count
Hatzfeldt. At length, in 1854, about the time that the unfortunate Dr.
Mendelssohn died in the East, he secured for the Countess complete
separation and an ample provision.

Lassalle's friendship with this lady inevitably gave rise to scandal. But
never surely was scandal so little justified. She was twenty years his
senior, and the relation was clearly that of mother and son. In her
letters he is always "my dear child," and in his she is the confidante of
the innumerable troubles of mind and of heart of which so impressionable
a man as Ferdinand Lassalle had more than his share.

"You are without reason and judgment where women are concerned," she
tells him, when he confides to her his passion for Helene von Donniges;
and the remark opens out a vista of confidences of which the world
happily kn