Three weeks had passed since the murder at Mr. Weishaupt’s—­three weeks the most agitated that had been known in this sequestered city.  We felt ourselves solitary, and thrown upon our own resources; all combination with other towns being unavailing from their great distance.  Our situation was no ordinary one.  Had there been some mysterious robbers among us, the chances of a visit, divided among so many, would have been too small to distress the most timid; while to young and high-spirited people, with courage to spare for ordinary trials, such a state of expectation would have sent pulses of pleasurable anxiety among the nerves.  But murderers! exterminating murderers!—­clothed in mystery and utter darkness—­these were objects too terrific for any family to contemplate with fortitude.  Had these very murderers added to their functions those of robbery, they would have become less terrific; nine out of every ten would have found themselves discharged, as it were, from the roll of those who were liable to a visit; while such as knew themselves liable would have had warning of their danger in the fact of being rich; and would, from the very riches which constituted that danger, have derived the means of repelling it.  But, as things were, no man could guess what it was that must make him obnoxious to the murderers.  Imagination exhausted itself in vain guesses at the causes which could by possibility have made the poor Weishaupts objects of such hatred to any man.  True, they were bigoted in a degree which indicated feebleness of intellect; but that wounded no man in particular, while to many it recommended them.  True, their charity was narrow and exclusive, but to those of their own religious body it expanded munificently; and, being rich beyond their wants, or any means of employing wealth which their gloomy asceticism allowed, they had the power of doing a great deal of good among the indigent papists of the suburbs.  As to the old gentleman and his wife, their infirmities confined them to the house.  Nobody remembered to have seen them abroad for years.  How, therefore, or when could they have made an enemy?  And, with respect to the maiden sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, they were simply weak-minded persons, now and then too censorious, but not placed in a situation to incur serious anger from any quarter, and too little heard of in society to occupy much of anybody’s attention.

Conceive, then, that three weeks have passed away, that the poor Weishaupts have been laid in that narrow sanctuary which no murderer’s voice will ever violate.  Quiet has not returned to us, but the first flutterings of panic have subsided.  People are beginning to respire freely again; and such another space of time would have cicatrized our wounds—­when, hark! a church bell rings out a loud alarm;—­the night is starlight and frosty—­the iron notes are heard clear, solemn, but agitated.  What could this mean?  I hurried to a room over the porter’s lodge, and, opening the window, I cried out to a man passing hastily below, “What, in God’s name, is the meaning of this?” It was a watchman belonging to our district.  I knew his voice, he knew mine, and he replied in great agitation: