From his service Zwanziger passed into that of Gebhard, whose wife shared the fate of Grohmann, for no other reason, according to her own account, than because that lady had treated her harshly. Even this wretched apology was proved false by the testimony of the other inmates of the house. The true motive, as in the preceding cases, was that she had formed designs upon Gebhard similar to those which had failed in the case of Glaser, and that the unfortunate lady stood in the way. Her death was accomplished by poisoning two jugs of beer from which Zwanziger from time to time supplied her with drink. Even while confessing that she had poisoned the beer, she persisted in maintaining that she had no intention of destroying her mistress; if she could have foreseen that such a consequence would follow, she would rather have died herself. During the remaining period from the death of Gebhard’s wife to that of her quitting his service, she admitted having frequently administered poisoned wine, beer, coffee and other liquors to such guests as she disliked or to her fellow servants when any of them had the bad luck to fall under her displeasure. The poisoning of the salt box she also admitted; but with the strange and inveterate hypocrisy which ran through all her confessions, she maintained that the arsenic in the salt barrel must have been put in by some other person. The fate of such a wretch could not, of course, be doubtful. She was condemned to be beheaded, and listened to the sentence apparently without emotion. She told the judge that her death was a fortunate thing for others, for she felt that she could not have discontinued poisoning had she lived. On the scaffold, she bowed courteously to the judge and assistants, walked calmly up to the block and received the blow without shrinking. CHAPTER IV THREE CELEBRATED CASES Karl Grosjean alias Grandisson--His residence in Heidelberg--Occupation unknown--Suspicion aroused--Letters seized by the postal authorities--Grosjean arrested in Berlin and imprisoned--Found dead in his cell--His wife cross-examined--Proved that he had perpetrated daring post-cart robberies--Brigandage--Formation of bands of robbers--Carefully planned attacks made on villages--Schinderhannes, the famous brigand chief--Arrested and brought to trial with his assistants, twenty of whom were guillotined--The horrible murder of Dorothea-Blankenfeld by her fellow travellers Antonini and his wife--Their sentence and its execution. The chronic disorder which reigned in central Europe during the nearly incessant warfare of the Napoleonic period stimulated the activity of daring and ingenious thieves. A successful depredator on a larger scale who long escaped detection was a certain Karl Grosjean, alias Grandisson, whose story may be told as a remarkable instance of the immunity enjoyed by his class.