Another series of procedures is of importance in determining proof, where circumstances are denied which have no essential relation to the crime. They bring the presentation of proof into a bypath so that the essential problem of evidence is left behind. Then if the denied circumstance is established as a fact it is falsely supposed that the guilt is so established. And in this direction many mistakes are frequently made. There are two suggestive examples. Some years ago there lived in Vienna a very pretty bachelor girl, a sales-person in a very respectable shop. One day she was found dead in her room. Inasmuch as the judicial investigation showed acute arsenic poisoning, and as a tumbler half full of sweetened water and a considerable quantity of finely powdered arsenic was found on her table, these two conditions were naturally correlated. From the neighbors it was learned that the dead girl had for some time been intimate with an unknown gentleman who visited her frequently, but whose presence was kept as secret as possible by both. This gentleman, it was said, had called on the girl on the evening before her death. The police inferred that the man was a very rich merchant, residing in a rather distant region, who lived peaceably with his much older wife and therefore kept his illicit relations with the girl secret. It was further established at the autopsy that the girl was pregnant, and so the theory was formed that the merchant had poisoned his mistress and in the examination this deed was set down against him. Now, if the man had immediately confessed that he knew the dead girl, and stood in intimate relation with her and that he had called on her the last evening; if he had asserted perhaps that she was in despair about her condition, had quarreled with him and had spoken of suicide, etc., then suicide would unconditionally have had to be the verdict. In any event, he never could have been accused, inasmuch as there was no additional evidence of poisoning. But the man conceived the unfortunate notion of denying that he knew the dead girl or had any relations with her, or that he had ever, even on that last evening, called on her. He did this clearly because he did not want to confess a culpable relation to public opinion, especially to his wife. And the whole question turned upon this denied circumstance. The problem of evidence was no longer, “Has he killed her,” but “Did he carry on an intimacy with her.” Then it was proved beyond reasonable doubt through a long series of witnesses that his visits to the girl were frequent, that he had been there on the evening before her death, and that there could be no possible doubt as to his identity. That settled his fate and he was sentenced to death. If we consider the case psychologically we have to grant that his denial of having been present might have for motive as much the fact that he had poisoned the girl, as that he did not want to admit the relation at the beginning.