FERDINAND  LASSALLE.

45

quent,  and  had  great  independence  of  character.  She  eagerly
occupied  herself  with  the  political  and  social  questions  of  the
day,  not  shrinking  from  the  boldest  ideas,  Lassalle,  who
resembled  her  in  more  than  one  respect,  attached  himself  to
her  from  the  first,  and  swore  to  obtain  her  rights  for  her.
Here  must  be  related  a  strange  incident,  whiclr  his  enemies
have  often  cited  against  him  as  a  crime.
The  Baroness  Meyendorf,  who  was  very  intimate  with
Count  Hatzfeld,  had  just  left  him  and  was  stopping  at  Cologne.
She  had  with  her  a  casket,  in  which  Madame  Hatzfeld  believed
were  enclosed  certain  documents  of  great  importance  in  her
lawsuit  Two  friends  of  Lassalle,  Mendelssohn  and  Oppenheim ­
  by  name,  got  into  Madame  Meyendorfs  room  at  the
Hôtel  Mainzer  Hof,  and  carried  off  the  casket,  which,  as  it
turned  out,  contained  only  jewels.  When  prosecuted  for  this
abstraction,  Mendelssohn  was  condemned  and  Oppenheim  was
acquitted.  Lassalle  being  tried  as  accomplice  and  adviser,
pleaded  his  own  defence  in  an  eloquent  speech  wherein
Socialism  clearly  transpired.  Found  guilty  by  the  jury,  but
only  by  a  majority  of  seven  to  five,  the  magistrates,  who  in
this  case  had  to  pronounce  judgment,  acquitted  him,  on  the
ground  that  the  abstraction  of  the  casket  had  not  taken  place
by  his  orders,  but  only  as  a  consequence  of  his  suit  against  the
baroness.  This  happened  in  August,  1848.
As  he  belonged  to  the  Dusseldorf  bar,  he  continued  to
conduct  the  Hatzfeld  case,  but  it  was  only  in  1854  that  he
brought  it  to  an  end  on  terms  very  favourable  to  the  countess.
During  the  same  time  he  threw  himself  eagerly  into  the  political ­
  movements  of,this  stormy  period.  He  wrote  in  Karl
Marx’s  paper,  the  Mue  Rheinische  Zeitung,  along  with  Engels,
Freiligrath,  Schapper,  Wolff,  and  other  less  noted  writers.
These  literary  labours,  however,  were  not  enough  for  him  ;
his  ardent  temperament  urged  him  to  action.  On  the  occasion
of  the  conflict  between  the  Prussian  Chamber  and  the  Minister
Manteuflel  at  Berlin,  he  endeavoured  to  organize  resistance  at
Dusseldorf  against  the  coup  d'etat  by  uniting  the  working  men
and  the  bourgeoisie  ;  and  when  a  few  representatives  did  refuse
to  vote  the  taxes,  he  tried  to  affix  seals  to  the  coffers  of  the