Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Karl Ludwig Sand - Celebrated Crimes by Alexandre Dumas père
page 37 of 74 (50%)
only recognise him by the description. Kotzebue chanced to take another
path. Sand walked about the park for an hour, but seeing no one who
corresponded to the description given him, went back to the house.

Kotzebue had come in, but was at breakfast and could not see him.

Sand went back to the Weinberg, and sat down to the midday table d'hote,
where he dined with an appearance of such calmness, and even of such
happiness, that his conversation, which was now lively, now simple, and
now dignified, was remarked by everybody. At five in the afternoon he
returned a third time to the house of Kotzebue, who was giving a great
dinner that day; but orders had been given to admit Sand. He was shown
into a little room opening out of the anteroom, and a moment after,
Kotzebue came in.

Sand then performed the drama which he had rehearsed upon his friend A.
S. Kotzebue, finding his face threatened, put his hands up to it, and
left his breast exposed; Sand at once stabbed him to the heart; Kotzebue
gave one cry, staggered, and fell back into an arm-chair: he was dead.

At the cry a little girl of six years old ran in, one of those charming
German children, with the faces of cherubs, blue-eyed, with long flowing
hair. She flung herself upon the body of Kotzebue, calling her father
with piercing cries. Sand, standing at the door, could not endure this
sight, and without going farther, he thrust the dagger, still covered
with Kotzebue's blood, up to the hilt into his own breast. Then, seeing
to his surprise that notwithstanding the terrible wound--he had just
given himself he did not feel the approach of death, and not wishing to
fall alive into the hands of the servants who were running in, he rushed
to the staircase. The persons who were invited were just coming in;
DigitalOcean Referral Badge