The Student-Life of Germany

by William Howitt

As soon as the old man was able from his exhausted daughter to learn the cause of her thus wandering in the night, his wrath burnt fiercely at the false son-in-law. He called up his huntsmen: the Bauers in the little city were armed, and with all possible speed they set out for the wood castle. But the robber had vanished with the mysteries of the closed chamber. It was empty. All the other rooms were still just in the state that the fugitives had left them, but gold there was none to find.

The next day, the castle was surrounded by soldiers that were sent out from Fulda, but the robbers had evacuated the country, and came not again. After many vain attempts, it occurred at last that one of the robbers was seized on the Bergstrasse. This led to further discoveries; and finally, they had the good fortune to take prisoner the captain himself. He was confined over the Manheimer Gate in Heidelberg, and was to be delivered over to the Hessian authorities, when he escaped in a most extraordinary manner out of his prison, but was speedily recaptured. After an examination, in which he was hard pressed without their being able to bring any confession from him, he was dismissed at eight o'clock in the evening. At half past nine o'clock the same evening, the gaoler announced to the magistrate who had presided on the inquiry that the Black Peter had escaped from his confinement. The watch had shot at him, but had missed him.

It was found that, without any negligence on the part of his keepers, he had got out in a scarcely imaginable manner, in his shirt only. He had taken the whole of the circular window of his prison with its frame out. By means of a sharp holdfast, with which the frame of the window had been secured, he had broken the two new and good locks of the chain with which he was chained crossways; taken off the chains; torn up his bedclothes, and twisted them into a rope-ladder, from ten to twelve feet long, and had slipped through the wonderfully narrow opening of the strong window-shutters, which, by proof made there and then, would admit the passage of no other head. When he had reached the bottom of his rope he had still nine or ten feet to drop to the earth; and the shot, which was instantly fired at him, passed close to him.

Immediately on his escape be sprung into the neighbouring Neckar, and concealed himself under the floor of a swimming-school, which was erected on a boat, where he continued many hours up to the mouth in water. He saw the pursuers on both banks of the Neckar, and in the swimming-school itself. It was not till after midnight that he attempted to wade through the Neckar, which, luckily for him, was then very low; but he had not reached the other bank of the river when he became aware of the watchers placed there also. He continued yet for a long time sitting on a rock in the middle of the flood. Finally, he made another attempt, reached the bank, sprang up it, and by a rapid and breathless flight succeeded in reaching, in spite of all the straining efforts of his pursuers, the hills and the woods.

In order to make his appearance in the wood the less striking to people that he might happen to meet, he slipped his legs through the sleeves of the shirt, and held the lower part of the shirt about his neck with his hands. He thus ran on to a great distance. He met two Bauers in the woods, to whom he feigned himself crazed and dumb, and begged of them by signs, and was so lucky as not only not to be seized, but to obtain an alms from them, with the pity of the givers. With this alms he purchased some bread at a solitary mill in the mountain. The people inquired the cause of his singular dress, or rather want of it; and he invented a lie which answered his purpose. He fled still farther; till, at evening, he was arrested by some Bauers of less easy faith, and who had already became apprised of his flight, and the reward offered for his recapture. He was brought back to his prison, and soon afterwards delivered over to the Hessians, and confined in a high tower. But even from this he effected his escape in the most ingenious manner possible.

One morning, the sentinel who was on duty at the foot of the tower looking up, observed a hole worked in the wall, from which a tolerably long rope hung. He immediately and with all speed gave intelligence of the circumstance to the police officers. All hastened up into the tower, and saw with amazement a hole made through the wall, of the width of a man's body of ordinary size. Into the wall, a piece of iron, part of the broken chain, was driven, and to this the rope was fastened; the rope itself was made from the torn up cover and tick of the prisoner's straw bed.

They could not sufficiently wonder how a man could pass through such a hole; how he could trust himself at such a terrific height to such a brittle rope; and how he could by any possibility, when he reached the end of this rope, the length of which was insignificant in comparison with the height of the tower, drop to the ground without certain destruction.

While they were thus lost in these wonders, the prisoner, who all the time was in the room concealed under the straw taken out of his bed and heaped up behind the door, crept silently out, passed the open standing door unobserved, descended the stairs, and completely effected his escape.

He lived afterwards in various places and by various means; and on the breaking out of the war, enlisted for a soldier. The Battle of Waterloo, which cost so many honourable men their lives, ended also his.

"And his former wife?" asked Hoffmann.