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HIGH AND WELL BORN CAPTAIN!

I send you a boy who wishes faithfully to serve his king. This boy was left in my house the 7th day of October, 1812; and I am myself a poor day laborer, who have also ten children and have enough to do to maintain my own family. The mother of the child only put him in my house for the sake of having him brought up. But I have never been able to discover who his mother is; nor have I ever given information to the provincial court that such a child was placed in my house. I thought I ought to receive him as my son. I have given him a Christian education; and since 1812 I have never suffered him to take a single step out of my house. So that no one knows where he was brought up. Nor does he know either the name of my house or where it is. You may ask him, but he cannot tell you. I have already taught him to read and write, and he writes my handwriting exactly as I do. And when we asked him what he would be, he said he would be one of the Chevaux-legers, as his father was. If he had had parents different from what he has, he would have become a learned lad. If you show him anything, he learns it immediately. I have only showed him the way to Neumark, whence he was to go to you. I told him, that when he had once become a soldier I should come to take him home, or I should lose my head. Good Mr. Captain, you need not try him; he does not know the place where I am. I took him away in the middle of the night, and he knows not the way home.

I am your most obedient servant. I do not sign my name, for I might be punished. He has not a kreutzer of money; because I have none myself. If you do not keep him, you may get rid of him, or let him be scrambled for.

(Translation by Henning Gottfried Linberg; from the American edition of Feuerbach: Caspar Hauser, Boston 1832)