Benjamin Klein. She. had given him the
very minutest quantity, so to be quite
safe, and had cautiously increased the succcessive
doses—not with the least intention to do
him any permanent harm, but to ascertain the
effectual dose for herself. She would not for
her life have hurt the man. In society she had
been noted for her sensibility—for the almost
morbid delicacy of her nerves and the acuteness
of her sympathies. That was all. As
to the charges of having administered poison
to her nearest connections, she treated the
calumny with the utmost indignation. The
judges were puzzled; the Ursinus was resolute
in the protestation of her innocence; and
the public were at a disagreeable nonplus.

What really had been the life and
character of the Ursinus? Sophia Charlotte
Elizabeth Weingarten was the daughter of a
so-called Baron Weingarten—who, as secretary
of legation in Austria, had, under a
charge of high treason, crossed to Prussia,
and assumed the name of Weiss. Fräulein
Weingarten, or Von Weiss, was born in
seventeen hundred and sixty. While residing
in her teens with an elder married
sister, wife of the Councillor of State Haacke,
at Spandau, occurred that genuine love affair
which her parents so summarily trampled
upon. She was called home to Stendal, and,
in her nineteenth year, married to Privy-Councillor
Ursinus. The privy-councillor was
a man of high standing, high character, and
most exemplary life; but, unluckily, all these
gifts and graces are often conferred upon or
acquired by men who do not possess the
other qualities that young ladies of nineteen
admire. The worthy councillor was old,
sickly, deaf, and passionless. In fact, he was
a dull, commonplace, diligent, unimaginative
pack-horse and official plodder; most meritorious
in his motives, and great in his department
of public business; but just the last
man for a lively handsome girl of nineteen.
On the other hand, he had his good
qualities, even as a husband. He had no
jealousies, and the most unbounded indulgence.

Soon after their marriage they removed to
Berlin, where, amid the gay society of the
capital, Madame Ursinus soon contracted a
warm friendship for a handsome young
Dutch officer, of the name of Rogay. Rogay,
in fact, was the man of her heart. She
declared, with her usual candour, in one of
her examinations before the magistrates, that
she was made for domestic affection. That as
there was no domestic affection between
herself and her departed husband, neither he nor
she pretended any. They agreed to consider
themselves as a legal couple, and as friends,
and no more. As to Captain Rogay, she
made no secret of it that she clung to him
with the most ardent feeling of love.

This attachment, the privy-councillor—the
most reasonable of men—so far from resenting,
encouraged and approved. He wished
his wife to make herself happy, and enjoy life
in her own way; and there is a long letter
preserved in the criminal records, which he
himself wrote at her dictation, to the beloved
Rogay, on an occasion when he had absented
himself for some time, urging him to renew
his visits, and that in the most love-like
terms, the tenderest of which the old man
underlined with his own hand.

But Rogay came not, he removed to
another place, and there, soon after, died.
Here was now another subject of suspicion.
Rogay had cause, said people, to keep
away; while she fawned on him, she had
killed him. But here, again, the testimony
of two of the most celebrated physicians
of the day was unanimous that the cause of
Rogay's death was consumption and nothing
more. The physician attested that he had
attended Rogay while he was living and
suffering under the roof of Privy-Councillor
Ursinus; that Madame Ursinus displayed
the most unequivocal affection for him; that
she attended on him, gave him everything
with her own hand, and that no wife could
have been more assiduously tender of him
than she was. She called herself Lotté in her
communications with him; not only because
her name was Charlotte, but because she was
an enthusiast of the Werter school, and loved
to be of the same name as Werter's idol. But
yet Rogay withdrew himself and died alone,
and at a distance.

Three years after the decease of Rogay
died Ursinus himself. Old he was, it is true,
but he was in perfect health. The kind wife
made him a little festival on his birthday,
and in the night he sickened and died. He
had taken something that disagreed with
him—but what so common at a feast?
Madame Ursinus sate up with him alone;
she called not a single creature; she hoped
he would be better; but the man was aged
and weak, and he went his way.

The year after, followed as suddenly her
maiden aunt, the wealthy Miss Witte. One
evening her doctor left her quite well, and in
the night she sickened and died. The
Ursinus was quite alone with her, called no
single domestic, but let the good lady die in
her arms. Both the bodies of the husband
and the aunt, now Klein's affair took place,
were disinterred and examined. There was
no poison traceable, but the corpses were
found dried together as if baked, or as if they
were mummies of a thousand years old. The
skin of the abdomen was so tough that it
resisted the surgeon's knife, and the soft
parts of the body had assumed the appearance
of hard tallow. The hands, fingers, and
feet of the old man were drawn together as
by spasms, his skin resembled parchment,
and the stomachs of both bore every trace of
injury and inflammation which had reduced
them to an inseparable mass. Yet, the eminent
doctors declared that poison was not the
cause of death in either case,—but apoplexy