The 'Song to Joy', with music by Körner, was published in the second number of the _Thalia_, which, after hanging fire for months, finally appeared in February, 1786. It contained also the poems 'Radicalism of Passion' and 'Resignation', and a fresh installment of 'Don Carlos'. Of the prose contributions the most important was the story, 'The Criminal from Disgrace', later called 'The Criminal from Lost Honor'. It was based upon a true story, got from Professor Abel in Stuttgart, concerning the life and death of a notorious Suabian robber, named Schwan, who was put to death in 1760. Schiller changed the name to Christian Wolf and built out of the ugly facts a strumous tale of criminal psychology,--the autopsy of a depraved soul, as he called it. His hero is a sort of vulgarized Karl Moor; that is, an enemy of society who might have been its friend if things had not happened so and so. The successive steps of his descent from mild resentment to malignant fury, libertinism and crime, and the reaction of his own increasing depravity upon his own mind, are described in a manner which is fairly interesting from a literary point of view, whatever a modern expert criminologist might think of it. The _crux_ of the ever difficult problem,--the precise division of responsibility between society and the wretch whom it spews out of its mouth,--is brought clearly into view, but without any attempt at an exact solution. The tale is not a homily, but an object-lesson designed to show how things go. It is too slight an affair to be worthy of extended comment, but it shows Schiller becoming interested in the psychological analysis of conduct. Moral goodness and badness are beginning to appear less simple concepts, and the tangle of human motive more intricate, than he had supposed. Along with these contributions there also appeared in the second number of the _Thalia_ a translation of the 'Précis Historique', prefixed by Mercier to his recently published 'Portrait de Philippe Second'. The 'portrait' itself was a dramatic picture, in fifty-two scenes, without division into acts. The work of Mercier, who paints the Spanish king in the darkest possible colors, furnished a few hints for 'Don Carlos', but its influence was not very great. What chiefly concerns us here is to note Schiller's awakening interest in historical studies. In the spring of 1786, during an absence of the Körners which deprived him of his wonted inspiration, he found himself unable to work. Letter after letter tells of laziness and mental vacuity. As he could do nothing else he took to desultory reading, and this did not satisfy him. 'Really', he wrote on the 15th of April: