The office of the Scharfrichter was in such bad odour that it would be difficult to find a man in the whole village who could be persuaded to undertake the task, even by the offer of a large reward.
However, after much speculation and gossip, the inhabitants came to the conclusion that everything might be done with money, and that someone would be certainly found to accept the bribe.
Others began to spread throughout the village that the man had already been found, and ventured to point out such or such a citizen as the new practitioner. Meanwhile the law had remained passive and had not troubled itself to make an exception in the case, and the burgomaster who had the superintendence of such affairs was far too phlegmatic and indifferent even to give the matter a thought.
He knew that an execution had to take place, that someone would be paid for amputating the head of the criminal, but whether it was to be one man's duty or another's was all the same to him.
The headsman's trade was hereditary, and he (the burgomaster) had never heard of any such innovation as that of selecting a new headsman during the lifetime of the rightful heir; therefore, as a matter of course, the young Scharfrichter was to decapitate his own father, and there was an end of the matter.
What to him were the feelings of the son at being forced to obey so unnatural a dictate? He was paid for it like anyone else, and very good pay he got, too.
What to him was the additional anguish of the criminal at being executed by his own son? He knew well enough that his son would step into his shoes when he himself should be deprived of office, and if he didn't like to lose his head at the hands of his own son, he ought to have reflected before he committed the murder.
Now, the burgomaster had a confidential servant, one Heinrich Göbel, a man of heartless and revengeful nature, who cherished an ill-will against the prisoner's son for having dared to supplant him in the affections of a certain blue-eyed damsel, the daughter of a tavern-keeper in the village.
The father of the lady in question was not over pleased with the attentions of either of these individuals towards his Lieschen, one of the aspirants for his daughter's hand being a drunkard, the son of an executioner, who besides the stigma inevitably attached to his character for life, would be obliged to maintain his daughter by the scanty proceeds of his loathsome profession.
The other, a man of notoriously bad character, and dependent upon the wages he received from his master for a living. Of the two, the maid herself decidedly favoured Leo Wenzel, the young headsman, and seeing this, Heinrich Göbel inwardly resolved to take vengeance on his rival upon the first opportunity.