"And may I further ask your--I mean you--where you are at home?"
"I am a child of Saxony," was the answer.
Afterwards, at the trial, the defendant insisted that this was exactly the reply made, whereas Volkmar asserted that the words were, "I am a child of the House of Saxony." But there can be no doubt that his imagination supplemented the actual words used with those he wished to hear.
"The small-pox has altered you since you left home," said Volkmar.
"Very likely. I have had the small-pox since I left my home."
Volkmar at once placed his house, his servants, his purse, at the disposal of his guest, and his offer was readily accepted.
It is now advisable to turn back and explain the situation, by relating the early history of this person, who passed under the name of Karl Marbitz, an armourer; but whom a good number of people suspected of being something other than what he gave himself out to be, though only Volkmar and Pöckel and one or two others supposed him to be the Crown Prince of Saxony.
Sophie Sabine Apitzsch was born at Lunzenau in Saxony in 1692, was well brought up, kept to school, and learned to write orthographically, and to have a fair general knowledge of history and geography. When she left school she was employed by her father in his trade, which was that of an armourer. She was tall and handsome, somewhat masculine--in after years a Cossack got into her boots--had the small-pox, which, however, only slightly disfigured her. In 1710 she had a suitor, a gamekeeper, Melchior Leonhart. But Sophie entertained a rooted dislike to marriage, and she kept her lover off for three years, till her father peremptorily ordered her to marry Melchior, and fixed the day for the wedding. Then Sophie one night got out of her own clothing, stepped into her father's best suit, and walked away in the garments of a man, and shortly afterwards appeared in Anspach under a feigned name, as a barber's assistant. Here she got into difficulties with the police, as she had no papers of legitimation, and to escape them, enlisted. She carried a musket for a month only, deserted, and resumed her vagabond life in civil attire, as a barber's assistant, and came to Leipzig, where she lodged at the Golden Cock. How she acquired the art, and how those liked it on whose faces she made her experiments with the razor, we are not told.