"'Who goes there?' he vociferated.
"'A friend,' answered the thief.
"'Advance, friend!' said the sentry with a significant rattle of his musket—a sort of intimation that non-compliance might be rewarded by a bullet.
"The thief walked up to the soldier.
"'Your passport,' demanded the latter.
"'My passport!' repeated the thief in tone of infinite astonishment, 'I have none.'
"'All the better for you,' said the sentry, shouldering his musket. 'If you had had one I should have been obliged to send you into the guard-house to have it examined, and that would have detained you a good half hour. But since you have no passport you can't show one, so you may pass.'
"And the intelligent warrior recommenced his monotonous promenade; while the thief, profiting by his obliging permission, walked out of the town."
Mannheim, the scene of Kotzebue's death, and his assassin's execution, could hardly fail to detain M. Dumas. At Frankfort he applies to a friend for an introduction to some person likely to give him details concerning Kotzebue and Sand, and his friend procures him a letter addressed to Mr Widemann, surgeon, Heidelberg. He has no letter for any body at Mannheim, and after visiting Kotzebue's house, leaves that town to proceed to Heidelberg. Just outside Mannheim he causes the postilion to stop, while he contemplates the place of the mad student's execution, which goes by the name of "Sand's Himmelfahrtwiese," or the meadow of Sand's ascension to heaven. It is a green meadow intersected by a rivulet, and situated within a few hundred yards of the town. While gazing at this field, and trying to conjecture the exact spot where the scaffold had stood, a stranger approaches of whom our traveller makes an enquiry. They fall into conversation, and the newcomer proves to be the governor of the prison in which Sand had been confined. Delighted at this rencontre, M. Dumas turns back and stops a day or two longer at Mannheim, copying some letters of Sand's, and collecting materials which fill several chapters of his book. He learns from his new friend that the Mr Widemann at Heidelberg, for whom he has a letter, is not only a surgeon but also the public executioner, although as yet his services have not been called into request in the latter capacity. It was his father who decapitated Sand. The Heidelberg executioner is noble by right of descent. The origin of his family's nobility is given by M. Dumas as follows:—
"The evening of the day on which King Louis of Bavaria was crowned emperor, there was a splendid ball at the town-hall, at which the empress was present. Amongst the guests was a cavalier dressed entirely in black, and having his face covered with a black mask. He invited the empress to dance: she accepted, and, whilst they were dancing together, another mask approached the emperor and asked him if he knew who his wife's partner was. 'No,' replied the emperor, 'but I suppose it is some sovereign prince.'