This guild did not develop very rapidly. But its leading members selected a meeting place situated on a hill in the vicinity of Erlangen. Here, after smoothing the ground and piling up stones to serve as seats, the students held a consecration feast at which punch and beer were freely indulged in. Hot discussions, followed by reconciliation, interrupted the proceedings. Dancing was indulged in around a fire, under the rays of the moon which shone through the pine trees, until the tired and probably somewhat intoxicated students, including Sand, lay down in different parts of the ground to sleep off their excitement. From Erlangen Sand moved to Jena, where he was a much less prominent student, and his life was uneventful, but when he left after eighteen months’ residence there, it was for Mannheim with daggers in his breast and a matured purpose of slaying Kotzebue. He had satisfied himself, after much inward conflict, that by killing the satirist he would be rendering a supreme service to the Fatherland. He was now possessed with a passion for notoriety. At Erlangen he had championed a good cause; at Jena his activity had perforce ceased, and the desire to do some remarkable deed had grown upon him. Constantly hungering for an opportunity to make himself celebrated, he resolved at least he would become a martyr if he could not be a hero. No obvious reason existed for his attack upon Kotzebue. The poet had many foibles and failings, it is true, but he had done nothing to deserve to be struck down by the dagger of a fanatic in the cause of virtue, liberty and the Fatherland. He had indeed ridiculed the outburst of German national feeling which was now being developed, and thereby gave great offence to the youthful enthusiasts. He was employed as a correspondent by the Russian government, to report upon German conditions, literary, artistic and intellectual. Men of ability were often chosen in a like capacity by the Russian and other governments, and their calling was regarded as a perfectly honourable one. Kotzebue, however, wrote of Germany in a malevolent spirit. His vanity had been wounded by the public burning of his “History of the Germans,” and this, no doubt, inspired the bitter sarcasm with which he attacked the German character, though his strictures were taken much too seriously by the Germans of that day.