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 Oppen 
heim 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 poli 
tical 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