I said to him, "I am the innkeeper; what cause have you to
call me a rogue, sir?"

The stranger replied:

"You're not the innkeeper I did business with a few minutes ago,
and he's the rascal I want to see. I want to know what the devil's
been done with my coach, and what's happened to my secretary and
my servants."

I tried to tell him that I knew nothing of what he was talking
about, but he would not listen, and gave me the lie, saying that
he had been drugged and robbed, and his people kidnaped. He even
had the impudence to claim that he and his secretary had been
sitting at a table in that room, drinking wine, not fifteen
minutes before, when there had been four noncommissioned officers
of the Third Uhlans at that table since noon. Everybody in the
room spoke up for me, but he would not listen, and was shouting
that we were all robbers, and kidnapers, and French spies, and I
don't know what all, when the police came.

Your honor, the man is mad. What I have told you about this is the
truth, and all that I know about this business, so help me God.

Christian Hauck

(Statement of Franz Bauer, inn servant, taken at the police station
at Perleburg, 25 November, 1809.)

May it please your honor, my name is Franz Bauer, and I am a
servant at the Sword & Scepter Inn, kept by Christian Hauck.

This afternoon, when I went into the inn yard to empty a bucket of
slops on the dung heap by the stables, I heard voices and turned
around, to see this gentleman speaking to Wilhelm Beick and Fritz
Herzer, who were greasing their wagon in the yard. He had not been
in the yard when I had turned away to empty the bucket, and I
thought that he must have come in from the street. This gentleman
was asking Beick and Herzer where was his coach, and when they
told him they didn't know, he turned and ran into the inn.

Of my own knowledge, the man had not been inside the inn before
then, nor had there been any coach, or any of the people he spoke
of, at the inn, and none of the things he spoke of happened there,
for otherwise I would know, since I was at the inn all day.

When I went back inside, I found him in the common room shouting
at my master, and claiming that he had been drugged and robbed. I
saw that he was mad and was afraid that he would do some mischief,
so I went for the police.

Franz Bauer
his (x) mark

(Statements of Wilhelm Beick and Fritz Herzer, peasants, taken at
the police station at Perleburg, 2