it was because of those infernal dunderheads of madhouse
doctors who have been bothering him. Only this afternoon they
deliberately handed him a bundle of newspapers--Prussian, Austrian,
French, and English--all dated within the last month. They wanted
they said, to see how he would react. Well, God pardon them,
they've found out!

What do you think should be done about giving the body burial?

Krutz

(From the British Minister, to the Count von Berchtenwald.)

December 20th, 1809

My dear Count von Berchtenwald:

Reply from London to my letter of the 28th, which accompanied the
dispatch case and the other papers, has finally come to hand. The
papers which you wanted returned--the copies of the statements
taken at Perleburg, the letter to the Baron von Krutz from the
police captain, Hartenstein, and the personal letter of Krutz's
nephew, Lieutenant von Tarlburg, and the letter of safe-conduct
found in the dispatch case--accompany herewith. I don't know what
the people at Whitehall did with the other papers; tossed them
into the nearest fire, for my guess. Were I in your place, that's
where the papers I am returning would go.

I have heard nothing, yet, from my dispatch of the 29th concerning
the death of the man who called himself Benjamin Bathurst, but I
doubt very much if any official notice will ever be taken of it.
Your government had a perfect right to detain the fellow, and,
that being the case, he attempted to escape at his own risk. After
all, sentries are not required to carry loaded muskets in order to
discourage them from putting their hands in their pockets.

To hazard a purely unofficial opinion, I should not imagine that
London is very much dissatisfied with this denouement. His Majesty's
government are a hard-headed and matter-of-fact set of gentry who do
not relish mysteries, least of all mysteries whose solution may be
more disturbing than the original problem.

This is entirely confidential, but those papers which were in
that dispatch case kicked up the devil's own row in London, with
half the government bigwigs protesting their innocence to high
Heaven, and the rest accusing one another of complicity in the
hoax. If that was somebody's intention, it was literally a
howling success. For a while, it was even feared that there would
be questions in Parliament, but eventually, the whole vexatious
business was hushed.

You may tell Count Tarlburg's son that his little friend is a
most t