greeted as among the greatest men of the age, it may well have seemed
flatly inconceivable that this insignificant little Swiss diplomatist
could long refuse the alliance he proposed. Yet stronger and more potent
may have been the feeling--although of this there is no positive evidence
extant--that the social movement which he had so much at heart could not
well endure a further scandal. The Hatzfeldt story had been used against
him frequently enough. An elopement--so sweetly romantic under some
circumstances--would have been the ruin of his great political
reputation.

Lassalle speedily regretted his course of action--what man in love would
not have done so?--but his first impulse was consistent with the life of
strenuous effort for the cause he had embraced. To a romantic girl,
however, his conduct could but seem brutal and treacherous. Helen had
done more than enough. She had compromised herself irretrievably, and an
immediate marriage was imperatively demanded by the conventionalities.
She was, however, seized by a brutal father and confined to her room,
until she understood that Lassalle had left Geneva. Then the entreaties
of her family, the representation that her sister's marriage, even her
father's position, were in jeopardy, caused her to declare that she would
abandon Lassalle.

At this point the story is conflicting. Helen herself says that she
never saw Lassalle again after he had handed her over to her mother, and
that after a long period of ill-usage and petty persecution, she was
hurried one night across the lake. Becker, however, declares that as
Lassalle and his friend Rustow were walking in Geneva a carriage passed
them on the way to the station containing Helen and another lady, and
that Helen acknowledged their salute. Anyway, it is clear that Helen
went to Bex on August 9, and that Lassalle left Geneva on the 13th.
Letter after letter was sent by Lassalle to Helen--one from Karlsruhe on
the 15th, and one from Munich on the 19th, but no answer. In Karlsruhe,
according to von Hofstetten, Lassalle wept like a child. His
correspondence with the Countess and with Colonel Rustow becomes forcible
in its demands for assistance. Writing to Rustow, he tells of a two
hours' conversation with the Bavarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron
von Schrenk, who assures him of his sympathy, says that he cannot
understand the objections of von Donniges, and that in similar
circumstances he would be p