My task was done. I had tracked this weak, vain, erring, hunted
soul to its last refuge, and the knowledge bequeathed to me but a
single duty. His sins were balanced by his temptations; his vanity
and weakness had revenged themselves; and there only remained to
tell the simple, faithful sister that her sacrifices were no longer
required. I burned the evidences of guilt, despair and suicide,
and sent the other papers, with a letter relating the time and
circumstances of Otto Lindenschmidt's death, to the civil
authorities of Breslau, requesting that they might be placed in the
hands of his sister Elise.
This, I supposed, was the end of the history, so far as my
connection with it was concerned. But one cannot track a secret
with impunity; the fatality connected with the act and the actor
clings even to the knowledge of the act. I had opened my door a
little, in order to look out upon the life of another, but in doing
so a ghost had entered in, and was not to be dislodged until
I had done its service.
In the summer of 1867 I was in Germany, and during a brief journey
of idlesse and enjoyment came to the lovely little watering-place
of Liebenstein, on the southern slope of the Thuringian Forest.
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