The fellow charged with delivering this letter had the bad luck, in a village close to Dresden, to be seized with a violent fit, such as he had been subject to from childhood. In this situation, the letter which he was carrying in his vest was found by the persons who came to his assistance; the man himself, as soon as he had recovered, was arrested and transported to the Government Office under guard, accompanied by a large crowd of people. As soon as the Governor of the Palace, Wenk, had read this letter, he went immediately to the palace to see the Elector; here he found present also the President of the Chancery of State, Count Kallheim, and the lords Kunz and Hinz, the former of whom had recovered from his wounds. These gentlemen were of the opinion that Kohlhaas should be arrested without delay and brought to trial on the charge of secret complicity with Nagelschmidt. They went on to demonstrate that such a letter could not have been written unless there had been preceding letters written by the horse-dealer, too, and that it would inevitably result in a wicked and criminal union of their forces for the purpose of plotting fresh iniquities.
The Elector steadfastly refused to violate, merely on the ground of this letter, the safe-conduct he had solemnly promised to Kohlhaas. He was more inclined to believe that Nagelschmidt's letter made it rather probable that no previous connection had existed between them, and all he would do to clear up the matter was to assent, though only after long hesitation, to the President's proposition to have the letter delivered to Kohlhaas by the man whom Nagelschmidt had sent, just as though he had not been arrested, and see whether Kohlhaas would answer it. In accordance with this plan the man, who had been thrown into prison, was taken to the Government Office the next morning. The Governor of the Palace gave him back the letter and, promising him freedom and the remission of the punishment which he had incurred, commanded him to deliver the letter to the horse-dealer as though nothing had happened. As was to be expected, the fellow lent himself to this low trick without hesitation. In apparently mysterious fashion he gained admission to Kohlhaas' room under the pretext of having crabs to sell, with which, in reality, the government clerk had supplied him in the market. Kohlhaas, who read the letter while the children were playing with the crabs, would certainly have seized the imposter by the collar and handed him over to the soldiers standing before his door, had the circumstances been other than they were. But since, in the existing state of men's minds, even this step was likewise capable of an equivocal interpretation, and as he was fully convinced that nothing in the world could rescue him from the affair in which he was entangled, be gazed sadly into the familiar face of the fellow, asked him where he lived, and bade him return in a few hours' time, when he would inform him of his decision in regard to his master. He told Sternbald, who happened to enter the door, to buy some crabs from the man in the room, and when this business was concluded and both men had gone away without recognizing each other, Kohlhaas sat down and wrote a letter to Nagelschmidt to the following effect: "First, that he accepted his proposition concerning the leadership of his band in Altenburg, and that accordingly, in order to free him from the present arrest in which he was held with his five children, Nagelschmidt should send him a wagon with two horses to Neustadt near Dresden. Also that, to facilitate progress, he would need another team of two horses on the road to Wittenberg, which way, though roundabout, was the only one he could take to come to him, for reasons which it would require too much time to explain. He thought that he would be able to win over by bribery the soldiers who were guarding him, but in case force were necessary he would like to know that he could count on the presence of a couple of stout-hearted, capable, and well-armed men in the suburb of Neustadt. To defray the expenses connected with all these preparations, he was sending Nagelschmidt by his follower a roll of twenty gold crowns concerning the expenditure of which he would settle with him after the affair was concluded. For the rest, Nagelschmidt's presence being unnecessary, he would ask him not to come in person to Dresden to assist at his rescue—nay, rather, he gave him the definite order to remain behind in Altenburg in provisional command of the band which could not be left without a leader."
When the man returned toward evening, he delivered this letter to him, rewarded him liberally, and impressed upon him that he must take good care of it.
Kohlhaas' intention was to go to Hamburg with his five children and there to take ship for the Levant, the East Indies, or the most distant land where the blue sky stretched above people other than those he knew. For his heart, bowed down by grief, had renounced the hope of ever seeing the black horses fattened, even apart from the reluctance that he felt in making common cause with Nagelschmidt to that end.
Hardly had the fellow delivered this answer of the horse-dealer's to the Governor of the Palace when the Lord High Chancellor was deposed, the President, Count Kallheim, was appointed Chief Justice of the Tribunal in his stead, and Kohlhaas was arrested by a special order of the Elector, heavily loaded with chains, and thrown into the city tower. He was brought to trial upon the basis of this letter, which was posted at every street-corner of the city. When a councilor held it up before Kohlhaas at the bar of the Tribunal and asked whether he acknowledged the handwriting, he answered, "Yes;" but to the question as to whether he had anything to say in his defense, he looked down at the ground and replied, "No." He was therefore condemned to be tortured with red-hot pincers by knacker's men, to be drawn and quartered, and his body to be burned between the wheel and the gallows.
Thus stood matters with poor Kohlhaas in Dresden when the Elector of Brandenburg appeared to rescue him from the clutches of arbitrary, superior power, and, in a note laid before the Chancery of State in Dresden, claimed him as a subject of Brandenburg. For the honest City Governor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, during a walk on the banks of the Spree, had acquainted the Elector with the story of this strange and irreprehensible man, on which occasion, pressed by the questions of the astonished sovereign, he could not avoid mentioning the blame which lay heavy upon the latter's own person through the unwarranted actions of his Arch-Chancellor, Count Siegfried von Kallheim. The Elector was extremely indignant about the matter and after he had called the Arch-Chancellor to account and found that the relationship which he bore to the house of the Tronkas was to blame for it all, he deposed Count Kallheim at once, with more than one token of his displeasure, and appointed Sir Heinrich von Geusau to be Arch-Chancellor in his stead.
Now it so happened that, just at that time, the King of Poland, being at odds with the House of Saxony, for what occasion we do not know, approached the Elector of Brandenburg with repeated and urgent arguments to induce him to make common cause with them against the House of Saxony, and, in consequence of this, the Arch-Chancellor, Sir Geusau, who was not unskilful in such matters, might very well hope that, without imperiling the peace of the whole state to a greater extent than consideration for an individual warrants, he would now be able to fulfil his sovereign's desire to secure justice for Kohlhaas at any cost whatever.
Therefore the Arch-Chancellor did not content himself with demanding, on the score of wholly arbitrary procedure, displeasing to God and man, that Kohlhaas should be unconditionally and immediately surrendered, so that, if guilty of a crime, he might be tried according to the laws of Brandenburg on charges which the Dresden Court might bring against him through an attorney at Berlin; but Sir Heinrich von Geusau even went so far as himself to demand passports for an attorney whom the Elector of Brandenburg wished to send to Dresden in order to secure justice for Kohlhaas against Squire Wenzel Tronka on account of the black horses which had been taken from him on Saxon territory and other flagrant instances of ill-usage and acts of violence. The Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, in the shifting of public offices in Saxony, had been appointed President of the State Chancery, and, hard pressed as he was, desired, for a variety of reasons, not to offend the Court of Berlin. He therefore answered in the name of his sovereign, who had been very greatly cast down by the note he had received, that they wondered at the unfriendliness and unreasonableness which had prompted the government of Brandenburg to contest the right of the Dresden Court to judge Kohlhaas according to their laws for the crimes which he had committed in the land, as it was known to all the world that the latter owned a considerable piece of property in the capital, and he did not himself dispute his qualification as a Saxon citizen.
But as the King of Poland was already assembling an army of five thousand men on the frontier of Saxony to fight for his claims, and as the Arch-Chancellor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, declared that Kohlhaasenbrück, the place after which the horse-dealer was named, was situated in Brandenburg, and that they would consider the execution of the sentence of death which had been pronounced upon him to be a violation of international law, the Elector of Saxony, upon the advice of the Chamberlain, Sir Kunz himself, who wished to back out of the affair, summoned Prince Christiern of Meissen from his estate, and decided, after a few words with this sagacious nobleman, to surrender Kohlhaas to the Court of Berlin in accordance with their demand.
The Prince, who, although very much displeased with the unseemly blunders which had been committed, was forced to take over the conduct of the Kohlhaas affair at the wish of his hard-pressed master, asked the Elector what charge he now wished to have lodged against the horse-dealer in the Supreme Court at Berlin. As they could not refer to Kohlhaas' fatal letter to Nagelschmidt because of the questionable and obscure circumstances under which it had been written, nor mention the former plundering and burning because of the edict in which the same had been pardoned, the Elector determined to lay before the Emperor's Majesty at Vienna a report concerning the armed invasion of Saxony by Kohlhaas, to make complaint concerning the violation of the public peace established by the Emperor, and to solicit His Majesty, since he was of course not bound by any amnesty, to call Kohlhaas to account therefor before the Court Tribunal at Berlin through an attorney of the Empire.
A week later the horse-dealer, still in chains, was packed into a wagon by the Knight Friedrich of Malzahn, whom the Elector of Brandenburg had sent to Dresden at the head of six troopers; and, together with his five children, who at his request had been collected from various foundling hospitals and orphan asylums, was transported to Berlin.
It so happened that the Elector of Saxony, accompanied by the Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, and his wife, Lady Heloise, daughter of the High Bailiff and sister of the President, not to mention other brilliant ladies and gentlemen, hunting-pages and courtiers, had gone to Dahme at the invitation of the High Bailiff, Count Aloysius of Kallheim, who at that time possessed a large estate on the border of Saxony, and, to entertain the Elector, had organized a large stag-hunt there. Under the shelter of tents gaily decorated with pennons, erected on a hill over against the highroad, the whole company, still covered with the dust of the hunt, was sitting at table, served by pages, while lively music sounded from the trunk of an oak-tree, when Kohlhaas with his escort of troopers came riding slowly along the road from Dresden. The sudden illness of one of Kohlhaas' delicate young children had obliged the Knight of Malzahn, who was his escort, to delay three whole days in Herzberg. Having to answer for this act only to the Prince whom he served, the Knight had not thought it necessary to inform the government of Saxony of the delay. The Elector, with throat half bare, his plumed hat decorated with sprigs of fir, as is the way of hunters, was seated beside Lady Heloise, who had been the first love of his early youth. The charm of the fête which surrounded him having put him in good humor, he said, "Let us go and offer this goblet of wine to the unfortunate man, whoever he may be."
Lady Heloise, casting an entrancing glance at him, got up at once, and, plundering the whole table, filled a silver dish which a page handed her with fruit, cakes, and bread. The entire company had already left the tent in a body, carrying refreshments of every kind, when the High Bailiff came toward them and with an embarrassed air begged them to remain where they were. In answer to the Elector's disconcerted question as to what had happened that he should show such confusion, the High Bailiff turned toward the Chamberlain and answered, stammering, that it was Kohlhaas who was in the wagon. At this piece of news, which none of the company could understand, as it was well known that the horse-dealer had set out six days before, the Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, turning back toward the tent, poured out his glass of wine on the ground. The Elector, flushing scarlet, set his glass down on a plate which a page, at a sign from the Chamberlain, held out to him for this purpose, and while the Knight, Friedrich von Malzahn, respectfully saluting the company, who were unknown to him, passed slowly under the tent ropes that were stretched across the highroad and continued on his way to Dahme, the lords and ladies, at the invitation of the High Bailiff, returned to the tent without taking any further notice of the party. As soon as the Elector had sat down again, the High Bailiff dispatched a messenger secretly to Dahme intending to have the magistrate of that place see to it that the horse-dealer continued his journey immediately; but since the Knight of Malzahn declared positively that, as the day was too far gone, he intended to spend the night in the place, they had to be content to lodge Kohlhaas quietly at a farm-house belonging to the magistrate, which lay off the main road, hidden away among the bushes.
Now it came about toward evening, when all recollection of the incident had been driven from the minds of the lords and ladies by the wine and the abundant dessert they had enjoyed, that the High Bailiff proposed they should again lie in wait for a herd of stags which had shown itself in the vicinity. The whole company took up the suggestion joyfully, and after they had provided themselves with guns went off in pairs, over ditches and hedges, into the near-by forest. Thus it was that the Elector and Lady Heloise, who was hanging on his arm in order to watch the sport, were, to their great astonishment, led by a messenger who had been placed at their service, directly across the court of the house in which Kohlhaas and the Brandenburg troopers were lodged. When Lady Heloise was informed of this she cried, "Your Highness, come!" and playfully concealing inside his silken vest the chain which hung around his neck she added, "Before the crowd follows us let us slip into the farm-house and have a look at the singular man who is spending the night here." The Elector blushed and seized her hand exclaiming, "Heloise! What are you thinking of?" But as she, looking at him with amazement, pulled him along and assured him that no one would ever recognize him in the hunting-costume he had on, and as, moreover, at this very moment a couple of hunting-pages who had already satisfied their curiosity came out of the house, and announced that in truth, on account of an arrangement made by the High Bailiff, neither the Knight nor the horse-dealer knew what company was assembled in the neighborhood of Dahme, the Elector pulled his hat down over his eyes with a smile and said, "Folly, thou rulest the world, and thy throne is a beautiful woman's mouth!"
Kohlhaas was sitting just then on a bundle of straw with his back against the wall, feeding bread and milk to his child who had been taken ill at Herzberg, when Lady Heloise and the Elector entered the farm-house to visit him. To start the conversation, Lady Heloise asked him who he was and what was the matter with the child; also what crime he had committed and where they were taking him with such an escort. Kohlhaas doffed his leather cap to her and, continuing his occupation, made laconic but satisfactory answers to all these questions. The Elector, who was standing behind the hunting-pages, remarked a little leaden locket hanging on a silk string around the horse-dealer's neck, and, since no better topic of conversation offered itself, he asked him what it signified and what was in it. Kohlhaas answered, "Oh, yes, worshipful Sir, this locket!" and with that he slipped it from his neck, opened it, and took out a little piece of paper with writing on it, sealed with a wafer. "There is a strange tale connected with this locket. It may be some seven months ago, on the very day after my wife's funeral—and, as you perhaps know, I had left Kohlhaasenbrück in order to get possession of Squire Tronka, who had done me great wrong—that in the market-town of Jüterbock, through which my expedition led me, the Elector of Saxony and the Elector of Brandenburg had met to discuss I know not what matter. As they had settled it to their liking shortly before evening, they were walking in friendly conversation through the streets of the town in order to take a look at the annual fair which was just being held there with much merry-making. They came upon a gipsy who was sitting on a stool, telling from the calendar the fortunes of the crowd that surrounded her. The two sovereigns asked her jokingly if she did not have something pleasing to reveal to them too? I had just dismounted with my troop at an inn, and happened to be present in the square where this incident occurred, but as I was standing at the entrance of a church, behind all the people, I could not hear what the strange woman said to the two lords. The people began to whisper to one another laughingly that she did not impart her knowledge to every one, and to crowd together to see the spectacle which was preparing, so that I, really more to make room for the curious than out of curiosity on my part, climbed on a bench behind me which was carved in the entrance of the church. From this point of vantage I could see with perfect ease the two sovereigns and the old woman, who was sitting on the stool before them apparently scribbling something down. But hardly had I caught sight of them, when suddenly she got up, leaning on her crutches, and, gazing around at the people, fixed her eye on me, who had never exchanged a word with her nor ever in all my life consulted her art. Pushing her way over to me through the dense crowd, she said, 'There! If the gentleman wishes to know his fortune, he may ask you about it!' And with these words, your Worship, she stretched out her thin bony hands to me and gave me this paper. All the people turned around in my direction, as I said, amazed, 'Grandam, what in the world is this you are giving me?' After mumbling a lot of inaudible nonsense, amid which, however, to my great surprise, I made out my own name, she answered, 'An amulet, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer; take good care of it; some day it will save your life!'—and vanished. Well," Kohlhaas continued good-naturedly, "to tell the truth, close as was the call in Dresden, I did not lose my life; but how I shall fare in Berlin and whether the charm will help me out there too, the future must show."
At these words the Elector seated himself on a bench, and although to Lady Heloise's frightened question as to what was the matter with him, he answered, "Nothing, nothing at all!"—yet, before she could spring forward and catch him in her arms, he had sunk down unconscious to the floor.
The Knight of Malzahn who entered the room at this moment on some errand, exclaimed, "Good heavens, what is the matter with the gentleman!" Lady Heloise cried, "Bring some water!" The hunting-pages raised the Elector and carried him to a bed in the next room, and the consternation reached its height when the Chamberlain, who had been summoned by a page, declared, after repeated vain efforts to restore him to consciousness, that he showed every sign of having been struck by apoplexy. The Cup-bearer sent a mounted messenger to Luckau for the doctor, and then, as the Elector opened his eyes, the High Bailiff had him placed in a carriage and transported at a walk to his hunting-castle near-by; this journey, however, caused two more fainting spells after he had arrived there. Not until late the next morning, on the arrival of the doctor from Luckau, did he recover somewhat, though showing definite symptoms of an approaching nervous fever. As soon as he had returned to consciousness he raised himself on his elbow, and his very first question was, "Where is Kohlhaas?" The Chamberlain, misunderstanding the question, said, as he took his hand, that he might set his heart at rest on the subject of that horrible man, as the latter, after that strange and incomprehensible incident, had by his order remained behind in the farm-house at Dahme with the escort from Brandenburg. Assuring the Elector of his most lively sympathy, and protesting that he had most bitterly reproached his wife for her inexcusable indiscretion in bringing about a meeting between him and this man, the Chamberlain went on to ask what could have occurred during the interview to affect his master so strangely and profoundly.
The Elector answered that he was obliged to confess to him that the sight of an insignificant piece of paper, which the man carried about with him in a leaden locket, was to blame for the whole unpleasant incident which had befallen him. To explain the circumstance, he added a variety of other things which the Chamberlain could not understand, then suddenly, clasping the latter's hand in his own, he assured him that the possession of this paper was of the utmost importance to himself and begged Sir Kunz to mount immediately, ride to Dahme, and purchase the paper for him from the horse-dealer at any price. The Chamberlain, who had difficulty in concealing his embarrassment, assured him that, if this piece of paper had any value for him, nothing in the world was more necessary than to conceal the fact from Kohlhaas, for if the latter should receive an indiscreet intimation of it, all the riches the Elector possessed would not be sufficient to buy it from the hands of this vindictive fellow, whose passion for revenge was insatiable. To calm his master he added that they must try to find another method, and that, as the miscreant probably was not especially attached to it for its own sake, perhaps, by using stratagem, they might get possession of the paper, which was of so much importance to the Elector, through the instrumentality of a third wholly disinterested person.
The Elector, wiping away the perspiration, asked if they could not send immediately to Dahme for this purpose and put a stop to the horse-dealer's being transported further for the present until, by some means or other, they had obtained possession of the paper. The Chamberlain, who could hardly believe his senses, replied that unhappily, according to all probable calculations, the horse-dealer must already have left Dahme and be across the border on the soil of Brandenburg; any attempt to interfere there with his being carried away, or actually to put a stop to it altogether, would give rise to difficulties of the most unpleasant and intricate kind, or even to such as it might perchance be impossible to overcome at all. As the Elector silently sank back on the pillow with a look of utter despair, the Chamberlain asked him what the paper contained and by what surprising and inexplicable chance he knew that the contents concerned himself. At this, however, the Elector cast several ambiguous glances at the Chamberlain, whose obligingness he distrusted on this occasion, and gave no answer. He lay there rigid, with his heart beating tumultuously, and looked down at the corner of the handkerchief which he was holding in his hands as if lost in thought. Suddenly he begged the Chamberlain to call to his room the hunting-page, Stein, an active, clever young gentleman whom he had often employed before in affairs of a secret nature, under the pretense that he had some other business to negotiate with him.
After he had explained the matter to the hunting-page and impressed upon him the importance of the paper which was in Kohlhaas' possession, the Elector asked him whether he wished to win an eternal right to his friendship by procuring this paper for him before the horse-dealer reached Berlin. As soon as the page had to some extent grasped the situation, unusual though it was, he assured his master that he would serve him to the utmost of his ability. The Elector therefore charged him to ride after Kohlhaas, and as it would probably be impossible to approach him with money, Stein should, in a cleverly conducted conversation, proffer him life and freedom in exchange for the paper—indeed, if Kohlhaas insisted upon it, he should, though with all possible caution, give him direct assistance in escaping from the hands of the Brandenburg troopers who were convoying him, by furnishing him with horses, men, and money.
The hunting-page, after procuring as a credential a paper written by the Elector's own hand, did immediately set out with several men, and by not sparing the horses' wind he had the good luck to overtake Kohlhaas in a village on the border, where with his five children and the Knight of Malzahn he was eating dinner in the open air before the door of a house. The hunting-page introduced himself to the Knight of Malzahn as a stranger who was passing by and wished to have a look at the extraordinary man whom he was escorting. The Knight at once made him acquainted with Kohlhaas and politely urged him to sit down at the table, and since Malzahn, busied with the preparations for their departure, was obliged to keep coming and going continually, and the troopers were eating their dinner at a table on the other side of the house, the hunting-page soon found an opportunity to reveal to the horse-dealer who he was and on what a peculiar mission he had come to him.
The horse-dealer already knew the name and rank of the man who, at sight of the locket in question, had swooned in the farm-house at Dahme; and to put the finishing touch to the tumult of excitement into which this discovery had thrown him, he needed only an insight into the secrets contained in the paper which, for many reasons, he was determined not to open out of mere curiosity. He answered that, in consideration of the ungenerous and unprincely treatment he had been forced to endure in Dresden in return for his complete willingness to make every possible sacrifice, he would keep the paper. To the hunting-page's question as to what induced him to make such an extraordinary refusal when he was offered in exchange nothing less than life and liberty, Kohlhaas answered, "Noble Sir, if your sovereign should come to me and say, 'Myself and the whole company of those who help me wield my sceptre I will destroy—destroy, you understand, which is, I admit, the dearest wish that my soul cherishes,' I should nevertheless still refuse to give him the paper which is worth more to him than life, and should say to him, 'You have the authority to send me to the scaffold, but I can cause you pain, and I intend to do so!'" And with these words Kohlhaas, with death staring him in the face, called a trooper to him and told him to take a nice bit of food which had been left in the dish. All the rest of the hour which he spent in the place he acted as though he did not see the young nobleman who was sitting at the table, and not until he climbed up on the wagon did he turn around to the hunting-page again and salute him with a parting glance.
When the Elector received this news his condition grew so much worse that for three fateful days the doctor had grave fears for his life, which was being attacked on so many sides at once. However, thanks to his naturally good constitution, after several weeks spent in pain on the sick-bed, he recovered sufficiently, at least, to permit his being placed in a carriage well supplied with pillows and coverings, and brought back to Dresden to take up the affairs of government once more.
As soon as he had arrived in the city he summoned Prince Christiern of Meissen and asked him what had been done about dispatching Judge Eibenmaier, whom the government had thought of sending to Vienna as its attorney in the Kohlhaas affair, in order to lay a complaint before his Imperial Majesty concerning the violation of the public peace proclaimed by the Emperor.
The Prince answered that the Judge, in conformity with the order the Elector had left behind on his departure for Dahme, had set out for Vienna immediately after the arrival of the jurist, Zäuner, whom the Elector of Brandenburg had sent to Dresden as his attorney in order to institute legal proceedings against Squire Wenzel Tronka in regard to the black horses.
The Elector flushed and walked over to his desk, expressing surprise at this haste, since, to his certain knowledge, he had made it clear that because of the necessity for a preliminary consultation with Dr. Luther, who had procured the amnesty for Kohlhaas, he wished to postpone the final departure of Eibenmaier until he should give a more explicit and definite order. At the same time, with an expression of restrained anger, he tossed about some letters and deeds which were lying on his desk. The Prince, after a pause during which he stared in surprise at his master, answered that he was sorry if he had failed to give him satisfaction in this matter; however, he could show the decision of the Council of State enjoining him to send off the attorney at the time mentioned. He added that in the Council of State nothing at all had been said of a consultation with Dr. Luther; that earlier in the affair, it would perhaps have been expedient to pay some regard to this reverend gentleman because of his intervention in Kohlhaas' behalf; but that this was no longer the case, now that the promised amnesty had been violated before the eyes of the world and Kohlhaas had been arrested and surrendered to the Brandenburg courts to be sentenced and executed.
The Elector replied that the error committed in dispatching Eibenmaier was, in fact, not a very serious one; he expressed a wish, however, that, for the present, the latter should not act in Vienna in his official capacity as plaintiff for Saxony, but should await further orders, and begged the Prince to send off to him immediately by a courier the instructions necessary to this end.
The Prince answered that, unfortunately, this order came just one day too late, as Eibenmaier, according to a report which had just arrived that day, had already acted in his capacity as plaintiff and had proceeded with the presentation of the complaint at the State Chancery in Vienna. In answer to the Elector's dismayed question as to how all this was possible in so short a time, he added that three weeks had passed since the departure of this man and that the instructions he had received had charged him to settle the business with all possible dispatch immediately after his arrival in Vienna. A delay, the Prince added, would have been all the more inadvisable in this case, as the Brandenburg attorney, Zäuner, was proceeding against Squire Wenzel Tronka with the most stubborn persistence and had already petitioned the court for the provisional removal of the black horses from the hands of the knacker with a view to their future restoration to good condition, and, in spite of all the arguments of the opposite side, had carried his point.
The Elector, ringing the bell, said, "No matter; it is of no importance," and turning around again toward the Prince asked indifferently how other things were going in Dresden and what had occurred during his absence. Then, incapable of hiding his inner state of mind, he saluted him with a wave of the hand and dismissed him.
That very same day the Elector sent him a written demand for all the official documents concerning Kohlhaas, under the pretext that, on account of the political importance of the affair, he wished to go over it himself. As he could not bear to think of destroying the man from whom alone he could receive information concerning the secrets contained in the paper, he composed an autograph letter to the Emperor; in this he affectionately and urgently requested that, for weighty reasons, which possibly he would explain to him in greater detail after a little while, he be allowed to withdraw for a time, until a further decision had been reached, the complaint which Eibenmaier had entered against Kohlhaas.
The Emperor, in a note drawn up by the State Chancery, replied that the change which seemed suddenly to have taken place in the Elector's mind astonished him exceedingly; that the report which had been furnished him on the part of Saxony had made the Kohlhaas affair a matter which concerned the entire Holy Roman Empire; that, in consequence, he, the Emperor, as head of the same, had felt it his duty to appear before the house of Brandenburg in this, as plaintiff in this affair, and that, therefore; since the Emperor's counsel, Franz Müller, had gone to Berlin in the capacity of attorney in order to call Kohlhaas to account for the violation of the public peace, the complaint could in no wise be withdrawn now and the affair must take its course in conformity with the law.
This letter completely crushed the Elector and, to his utter dismay, private communications from Berlin reached him a short time after, announcing the institution of the lawsuit before the Supreme Court at Berlin and containing the remark that Kohlhaas, in spite of all the efforts of the lawyer assigned him, would in all probability end on the scaffold. The unhappy sovereign determined, therefore, to make one more effort, and in an autograph letter begged the Elector of Brandenburg to spare Kohlhaas' life. He alleged as pretext that the amnesty solemnly promised to this man did not lawfully permit the execution of a death sentence upon him; he assured the Elector that, in spite of the apparent severity with which Kohlhaas had been treated in Saxony, it had never been his intention to allow the latter to die, and described how wretched he should be if the protection which they had pretended to be willing to afford the man from Berlin should, by an unexpected turn of affairs, prove in the end to be more detrimental to him than if he had remained in Dresden and his affair had been decided according to the laws of Saxony.
The Elector of Brandenburg, to whom much of this declaration seemed ambiguous and obscure, answered that the energy with which the attorney of his Majesty the Emperor was proceeding made it absolutely out of the question for him to conform to the wish expressed by the Elector of Saxony and depart from the strict precepts of the law. He remarked that the solicitude thus displayed really went too far, inasmuch as the complaint against Kohlhaas on account of the crimes which had been pardoned in the amnesty had, as a matter of fact, not been entered at the Supreme Court at Berlin by him, the sovereign who had granted the amnesty, but by the supreme head of the Empire who was in no wise bound thereby. At the same time he represented to him how necessary it was to make a fearful example of Kohlhaas in view of the continued outrages of Nagelschmidt, who with unheard-of boldness was already extending his depredations as far as Brandenburg, and begged him, in case he refused to be influenced by these considerations, to apply to His Majesty the Emperor himself, since, if a decree was to be issued in favor of Kohlhaas, this could only be rendered after a declaration on his Majesty's part.
The Elector fell ill again with grief and vexation over all these unsuccessful attempts, and one morning, when the Chamberlain came to pay him a visit, he showed him the letters which he had written to the courts of Vienna and Berlin in the effort to prolong Kohlhaas' life and thus at least gain time in which to get possession of the paper in the latter's hands. The Chamberlain threw himself on his knees before him and begged him by all that he held sacred and dear to tell him what this paper contained. The Elector bade him bolt the doors of the room and sit down on the bed beside him, and after he had grasped his hand and, with a sigh, pressed it to his heart, he began as follows "Your wife, as I hear, has already told you that the Elector of Brandenburg and I, on the third day of the conference that we held at Jüterbock, came upon a gipsy, and the Elector, lively as he is by nature, determined to destroy by a jest in the presence of all the people the fame of this fantastic woman, whose art had, inappropriately enough, just been the topic of conversation at dinner. He walked up to her table with his arms crossed and demanded from her a sign—one that could be put to the test that very day—to prove the truth of the fortune she was about to tell him, pretending that, even if she were the Roman Sibyl herself, he could not believe her words without it. The woman, hastily taking our measure from head to foot, said that the sign would be that, even before we should leave, the big horned roebuck which the gardener's son was raising in the park, would come to meet us in the market-place where we were standing at that moment. Now you must know that this roebuck, which was destined for the Dresden kitchen, was kept behind lock and key in an inclosure fenced in with high boards and shaded by the oak-trees of the park; and since, moreover, on account of other smaller game and birds, the park in general and also the garden leading to it, were kept carefully locked, it was absolutely impossible to understand how the animal could carry out this strange prediction and come to meet us in the square where we were standing. Nevertheless the Elector, afraid that some trick might be behind it and determined for the sake of the joke to give the lie once and for all to everything else that she might say, sent to the castle, after a short consultation with me, and ordered that the roebuck be instantly killed and prepared for the table within the next few days. Then he turned back to the woman before whom this matter had been transacted aloud, and said, 'Well, go ahead! What have you to disclose to me of the future?' The woman, looking at his hand, said, 'Hail, my Elector and Sovereign! Your Grace will reign for a long time, the house from which you spring will long endure, and your descendants will be great and glorious and will come to exceed in power all the other princes and sovereigns of the world.'
"The Elector, after a pause in which he looked thoughtfully at the woman, said in an undertone, as he took a step toward me, that he was almost sorry now that he had sent off a messenger to ruin the prophecy; and while amid loud rejoicing the money rained down in heaps into the woman's lap from the hands of the knights who followed the Elector, the latter, after feeling in his pocket and adding a gold piece on his own account, asked if the salutation which she was about to about to reveal to me also had such a silvery sound as his. The woman opened a box that stood beside her and in a leisurely, precise way arranged the money in it according to kind and quantity; then she closed it again, shaded her eyes with her hand as if the sun annoyed her, and looked at me. I repeated the question I had asked her and, while she examined my hand, I added jokingly to the Elector, 'To me, so it seems, she has nothing really agreeable to announce!' At that she seized her crutches, raised herself slowly with their aid from her stool, and, pressing close to me with her hands held before her mysteriously, she whispered audibly in my ear, 'No!' 'Is that so?' I asked confused, and drew back a step before the figure, who with a look cold and lifeless as though from eyes of marble, seated herself once more on the stool behind her; 'from what quarter does danger menace my house?' The woman, taking a piece of charcoal and a paper in her hand and crossing her knees, asked whether she should write it down for me; and as I, really embarrassed, though only because under the existing circumstances there was nothing else for me to do, answered, 'Yes, do so,' she replied, 'Very well! Three things I will write down for you—the name of the last ruler of your house, the year in which he will lose his throne, and the name of the man who through the power of arms will seize it for himself.' Having done this before the eyes of all the people she arose, sealed the paper with a wafer, which she moistened in her withered mouth, and pressed upon it a leaden seal ring which she wore on her middle finger. And as I, curious beyond all words, as you can well imagine, was about to seize the paper, she said, 'Not so, Your Highness!' and turned and raised one of her crutches; 'from that man there, the one with the plumed hat, standing on the bench at the entrance of the church behind all the people—from him you shall redeem it, if it so please you!' And with these words, before I had clearly grasped what she was saying, she left me standing in the square, speechless with astonishment, and, clapping shut the box that stood behind her and slinging it over her back, she disappeared in the crowd of people surrounding us, so that I could no longer watch what she was doing. But at this moment, to my great consolation, I must admit, there appeared the knight whom the Elector had sent to the castle, and reported, with a smile hovering on his lips, that the roebuck had been killed and dragged off to the kitchen by two hunters before his very eyes. The Elector, gaily placing his arm in mine with the intention of leading me away from the square, said, 'Well then, the prophecy was a commonplace swindle and not worth the time and money which it has cost us!' But how great was our astonishment when, even before he had finished speaking, a cry went up around the whole square, and the eyes of all turned toward a large butcher's dog trotting along from the castle yard. In the kitchen he had seized the roebuck by the neck as a fair prize, and, pursued by men-servants and maids, dropped the animal on the ground three paces in front of us. Thus indeed the woman's prophecy, which was the pledge for the truth of all that she had uttered, was fulfilled, and the roebuck, although dead to be sure, had come to the market-place to meet us. The lightning which falls from heaven on a winter's day cannot annihilate more completely than this sight did me, and my first endeavor, as soon as I had excused myself from the company which surrounded me, was to discover immediately the whereabouts of the man with the plumed hat whom the woman had pointed out to me; but none of my people, though sent out on a three days' continuous search, could give me even the remotest kind of information concerning him. And then, friend Kunz, a few weeks ago in the farm-house at Dahme, I saw the man with my own eyes!"
With these words he let go of the Chamberlain's hand and, wiping away the perspiration, sank back again on the couch. The Chamberlain, who considered it a waste of effort to attempt to contradict the Elector's opinion of the incident or to try to make him adopt his own view of the matter, begged him by all means to try to get possession of the paper and afterward to leave the fellow to his fate. But the Elector answered that he saw absolutely no way of doing so, although the thought of having to do without it or perhaps even seeing all knowledge of it perish with this man, brought him to the verge of misery and despair. When asked by his friend whether he had made any attempts to discover the person of the gipsy-woman herself, the Elector replied that the Government Office, in consequence of an order which he had issued under a false pretext, had been searching in vain for this woman throughout the Electorate; in view of these facts, for reasons, however, which he refused to explain in detail, he doubted whether she could ever be discovered in Saxony.
Now it happened that the Chamberlain wished to go to Berlin on account of several considerable pieces of property in the Neumark of Brandenburg which his wife had fallen heir to from the estate of the Arch-Chancellor, Count Kallheim, who had died shortly after being deposed. As Sir Kunz really loved the Elector, he asked, after reflecting for a short time, whether the latter would leave the matter to his discretion; and when his master, pressing his hand affectionately to his breast, answered, "Imagine that you are myself, and secure the paper for me!" the Chamberlain turned over his affairs to a subordinate, hastened his departure by several days, left his wife behind, and set out for Berlin, accompanied only by a few servants.
Kohlhaas, as we have said, had meanwhile arrived in Berlin, and by special order of the Elector of Brandenburg had been placed in a prison for nobles, where, together with his five children, he was made as comfortable as circumstances permitted. Immediately after the appearance of the Imperial attorney from Vienna the horse-dealer was called to account before the bar of the Supreme Court for the violation of the public peace proclaimed throughout the Empire, and although in his answer he objected that, by virtue of the agreement concluded with the Elector of Saxony at Lützen, he could not be prosecuted for the armed invasion of that country and the acts of violence committed at that time, he was nevertheless told for his information that His Majesty the Emperor, whose attorney was making the complaint in this case, could not take that into account. And indeed, after the situation had been explained to him and he had been told that, to offset this, complete satisfaction would be rendered to him in Dresden in his suit against Squire Wenzel Tronka, he very soon acquiesced in the matter.
Thus it happened that, precisely on the day of the arrival of the Chamberlain, judgment was pronounced, and Kohlhaas was condemned to lose his life by the sword, which sentence, however, in the complicated state of affairs, no one believed would be carried out, in spite of its mercy. Indeed the whole city, knowing the good will which the Elector bore Kohlhaas, confidently hoped to see it commuted by an electoral decree to a mere, though possibly long and severe, term of imprisonment.
The Chamberlain, who nevertheless realized that no time was to be lost if the commission given him by his master was to be accomplished, set about his business by giving Kohlhaas an opportunity to get a good look at him, dressed as he was in his ordinary court costume, one morning when the horse-dealer was standing at the window of his prison innocently gazing at the passers-by. As he concluded from a sudden movement of his head that he had noticed him, and with great pleasure observed particularly that he put his hand involuntarily to that part of the chest where the locket was lying, he considered that what had taken place at that moment in Kohlhaas' soul was a sufficient preparation to allow him to go a step further in the attempt to gain possession of the paper. He therefore sent for an old woman who hobbled around on crutches, selling old clothes; he had noticed her in the streets of Berlin among a crowd of other rag-pickers, and in age and costume she seemed to him to correspond fairly well to the woman described to him by the Elector of Saxony. On the supposition that Kohlhaas probably had not fixed very deeply in mind the features of the old gipsy, of whom he had had but a fleeting vision as she handed him the paper, he determined to substitute the aforesaid woman for her and, if it were practicable, to have her act the part of the gipsy before Kohlhaas. In accordance with this plan and in order to fit her for the rôle, he informed her in detail of all that had taken place in Jüterbock between the Elector and the gipsy, and, as he did not know how far the latter had gone in her declarations to Kohlhaas, he did not forget to impress particularly upon the woman the three mysterious items contained in the paper. After he had explained to her what she must disclose in disconnected and incoherent fashion, about certain measures which had been taken to get possession, either by strategy or by force, of this paper which was of the utmost importance to the Saxon court, he charged her to demand of Kohlhaas that he should give the paper to her to keep during a few fateful days, on the pretext that it was no longer safe with him.
As was to be expected, the woman undertook the execution of this business at once on the promise of a considerable reward, a part of which the Chamberlain, at her demand, had to pay over to her in advance. As the mother of Herse, the groom who had fallen at Mühlberg, had permission from the government to visit Kohlhaas at times, and this woman had already known her for several months, she succeeded a few days later in gaining access to the horse-dealer by means of a small gratuity to the warden.
But when the woman entered his room, Kohlhaas, from a seal ring that she wore on her hand and a coral chain that hung round her neck, thought that he recognized in her the very same old gipsy-woman who had handed him the paper in Jüterbock; and since probability is not always on the side of truth, it so happened that here something had occurred which we will indeed relate, but at the same time, to those who wish to question it we must accord full liberty to do so. The Chamberlain had made the most colossal blunder, and in the aged old-clothes woman, whom he had picked up in the streets of Berlin to impersonate the gipsy, he had hit upon the very same mysterious gipsy-woman whom he wished to have impersonated. At least, while leaning on her crutches and stroking the cheeks of the children who, intimidated by her singular appearance, were pressing close to their father, the woman informed the latter that she had returned to Brandenburg from Saxony some time before, and that after an unguarded question which the Chamberlain had hazarded in the streets of Berlin about the gipsy-woman who had been in Jüterbock in the spring of the previous year, she had immediately pressed forward to him, and under a false name had offered herself for the business which he wished to see done.
The horse-dealer remarked such a strange likeness between her and his dead wife Lisbeth that he might have asked the old woman whether she were his wife's grandmother; for not only did her features and her hands—with fingers still shapely and beautiful—and especially the use she made of them when speaking, remind him vividly of Lisbeth; he even noticed on her neck a mole like one with which his wife's neck was marked. With his thoughts in a strange whirl he urged the gipsy to sit down on a chair and asked what it could possibly be that brought her to him on business for the Chamberlain.
While Kohlhaas' old dog snuffed around her knees and wagged his tail as she gently patted his head, the Woman answered that she had been commissioned by the Chamberlain to inform him what the three questions of importance for the Court of Saxony were, to which the paper contained the mysterious answer; to warn him of a messenger who was then in Berlin for the purpose of gaining possession of it; and to demand the paper from him on the pretext that it was no longer safe next his heart where he was carrying it. She said that the real purpose for which she had come, however, was to tell him that the threat to get the paper away from him by strategy or by force was an absurd and empty fraud; that under the protection of the Elector of Brandenburg, in whose custody he was, he need not have the least fear for its safety; that the paper was indeed much safer with him than with her, and that he should take good care not to lose possession of it by giving it up to any one, no matter on what pretext. Nevertheless, she concluded, she considered it would be wise to use the paper for the purpose for which she had given it to him at the fair in Jüterbock, to lend a favorable ear to the offer which had been made to him on the frontier through Squire Stein, and in return for life and liberty to surrender the paper, which could be of no further use to him, to the Elector of Saxony.
Kohlhaas, who was exulting over the power which was thus afforded him to wound the heel of his enemy mortally at the very moment when it was treading him in the dust, made answer, "Not for the world, grandam, not for the world!" He pressed the old woman's hand warmly and only asked to know what sort of answers to the tremendous questions were contained in the paper. Taking on her lap the youngest child, who had crouched at her feet, the woman said, "Not for the world, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer, but for this pretty, fair-haired little lad!" and with that she laughed softly at the child, petted and kissed him while he stared at her in wide-eyed surprise, and with her withered hands gave him an apple which she had in her pocket. Kohlhaas answered, in some confusion, that the children themselves, when they were grown, would approve his conduct, and that he could do nothing of greater benefit to them and their grandchildren than to keep the paper. He asked, furthermore, who would insure him against a new deception after the experience he had been through, and whether, in the end, he would not be making a vain sacrifice of the paper to the Elector, as had lately happened in the case of the band of troops which he had collected in Lützen. "If I've once caught a man breaking his word," said he, "I never exchange another with him; and nothing but your command, positive and unequivocal, shall separate me, good grandam, from this paper through which I have been granted satisfaction in such a wonderful fashion for all I have suffered."
The woman set the child down on the floor again and said that in many respects he was right, and that he could do or leave undone what he wished; and with that she took up her crutches again and started to go. Kohlhaas repeated his question regarding the contents of the wonderful paper; she answered hastily that, of course, he could open it, although it would be pure curiosity on his part. He wished to find out about a thousand other things yet, before she left him—who she really was, how she came by the knowledge resident within her, why she had refused to give the magic paper to the Elector for whom it had been written after all, and among so many thousand people had handed it precisely to him, Kohlhaas, who had never consulted her art.
Now it happened that, just at that moment, a noise was heard, caused by several police officials who were mounting the stairway, so that the woman, seized with sudden apprehension at being found by them in these quarters, exclaimed, "Good-by for the present, Kohlhaas, good-by for the present. When we meet again you shall not lack information concerning all these things." With that she turned toward the door, crying, "Farewell, children, farewell!" Then she kissed the little folks one after the other, and went off.
In the mean time the Elector of Saxony, abandoned to his wretched thoughts, had called in two astrologers, Oldenholm and Olearius by name, who at that time enjoyed a great reputation in Saxony, and had asked their advice concerning the mysterious paper which was of such importance to him and all his descendants. After making a profound investigation of several days' duration in the tower of the Dresden palace, the men could not agree as to whether the prophecy referred to remote centuries or, perhaps, to the present time, with a possible reference to the King of Poland, with whom the relations were still of a very warlike nature. The disquietude, not to say the despair, in which the unhappy sovereign was plunged, was only increased by such learned disputes, and finally was so intensified as to seem to his soul wholly intolerable. In addition, just at this time the Chamberlain charged his wife that before she left for Berlin, whither she was about to follow him, she should adroitly inform the Elector, that, after the failure of an attempt, which he had made with the help of an old woman who had kept out of sight ever since, there was but slight hope of securing the paper in Kohlhaas' possession, inasmuch as the death sentence pronounced against the horse-dealer had now at last been signed by the Elector of Brandenburg after a minute examination of all the legal documents, and the day of execution already set for the Monday after Palm Sunday. At this news the Elector, his heart torn by grief and remorse, shut himself up in his room like a man in utter despair and, tired of life, refused for two days to take food; on the third day he suddenly disappeared from Dresden after sending a short communication to the Government Office with word that he was going to the Prince of Dessau's to hunt. Where he actually did go and whether he did wend his way toward Dessau, we shall not undertake to say, as the chronicles—which we have diligently compared before reporting events—at this point contradict and offset one another in a very peculiar manner. So much is certain: the Prince of Dessau was incapable of hunting, as he was at this time lying ill in Brunswick at the residence of his uncle, Duke Henry, and it is also certain that Lady Heloise on the evening of the following day arrived in Berlin at the house of her husband, Sir Kunz, the Chamberlain, in the company of a certain Count von Königstein whom she gave out to be her cousin.
In the mean time, on the order of the Elector of Brandenburg, the death sentence was read to Kohlhaas, his chains were removed, and the papers concerning his property, to which papers his right had been denied in Dresden, were returned to him. When the councilors whom the court had dispatched to him asked what disposition he wished to have made of his property after his death, with the help of a notary he made out a will in favor of his children and appointed his honest friend, the bailiff at Kohlhaasenbrück, to be their guardian. After that, nothing could match the peace and contentment of his last days. For in consequence of a singular decree extraordinary issued by the Elector, the prison in which he was kept was soon after thrown open and free entrance was allowed day and night to all his friends, of whom he possessed a great many in the city. He even had the further satisfaction of seeing the theologian, Jacob Freising, enter his prison as a messenger from Dr. Luther, with a letter from the latter's own hand—without doubt a very remarkable document which, however, has since been lost—and of receiving the blessed Holy Communion at the hands of this reverend gentleman in the presence of two deans of Brandenburg, who assisted him in administering it.
Amid general commotion in the city, which could not even yet be weaned from the hope of seeing him saved by an electoral rescript, there now dawned the fateful Monday after Palm Sunday, on which Kohlhaas was to make atonement to the world for the all-too-rash attempt to procure justice for himself within it. Accompanied by a strong guard and conducted by the theologian, Jacob Freising, he was just leaving the gate of his prison with his two lads in his arms—for this favor he had expressly requested at the bar of the court—when among a sorrowful throng of acquaintances, who were pressing his hands in farewell, there stepped up to him, with haggard face, the castellan of the Elector's palace, and gave him a paper which he said an old woman had put in his hands for him. The latter, looking in surprise at the man, whom he scarcely knew, opened the paper. The seal pressed upon the wafer had reminded him at once of the frequently mentioned gipsy-woman, but who can describe the astonishment which filled him when he found the following information contained in it: "Kohlhaas, the Elector of Saxony is in Berlin; he has already preceded you to the place of execution, and, if you care to know, can be recognized by a hat with blue and white plumes. The purpose for which he comes I do not need to tell you. He intends, as soon as you are buried, to have the locket dug up and the paper in it opened and read. Your Lisbeth."
Kohlhaas turned to the castellan in the utmost astonishment and asked him if he knew the marvelous woman who had given him the note. But just as the castellan started to answer "Kohlhaas, the woman—" and then hesitated strangely in the middle of his sentence, the horse-dealer was borne away by the procession which moved on again at that moment, and could not make out what the man, who seemed to be trembling in every limb, finally uttered.
When Kohlhaas arrived at the place of execution he found there the Elector of Brandenburg and his suite, among whom was the Arch-Chancellor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, halting on horseback, in the midst of an innumerable crowd of people. On the sovereign's right was the Imperial attorney, Franz Müller, with a copy of the death sentence in his hand; on his left was his own attorney, the jurist Anton Zäuner, with the decree of the Court Tribunal at Dresden. In the middle of the half circle formed by the people stood a herald with a bundle of articles, and the two black horses, fat and glossy, pawing the ground impatiently. For the Arch-Chancellor, Sir Heinrich, had won the suit instituted at Dresden in the name of his master without yielding a single point to Squire Wenzel Tronka. After the horses had been made honorable once more by having a banner waved over their heads, and taken from the knacker, who was feeding them, they had been fattened by the Squire's servants and then, in the market-place in Dresden, had been turned over to the attorney in the presence of a specially appointed commission. Accordingly when Kohlhaas, accompanied by his guard, advanced to the mound where the Elector was awaiting him, the latter said, "Well, Kohlhaas, this is the day on which you receive justice that is your due. Look, I here deliver to you all that was taken from you by force at the Tronka Castle which I, as your sovereign, was bound to procure for you again; here are the black horses, the neck-cloth, the gold gulden, the linen—everything down to the very amount of the bill for medical attention furnished your groom, Herse, who fell at Mühlberg. Are you satisfied with me?"
Kohlhaas set the two children whom he was carrying in his arms down on the ground beside him, and with eyes sparkling with astonished pleasure read the decree which was handed to him at a sign from the Arch-Chancellor. When he also found in it a clause condemning Squire Wenzel Tronka to a punishment of two years' imprisonment, his feelings completely overcame him and he sank down on his knees at some distance from the Elector, with his hands folded across his breast. Rising and laying his hand on the knee of the Arch-Chancellor, he joyfully assured him that his dearest wish on earth had been fulfilled; then he walked over to the horses, examined them and patted their plump necks, and, coming back to the Chancellor, declared with a smile that he was going to present them to his two sons, Henry and Leopold!
The Chancellor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, looking graciously down upon him from his horse, promised him in the name of the Elector that his last wish should be held sacred and asked him also to dispose of the other articles contained in the bundle, as seemed good to him. Whereupon Kohlhaas called out from the crowd Herse's old mother, whom he had caught sight of in the square, and, giving her the things, said, "Here, grandmother, these belong to you!" The indemnity for the loss of Herse was with the money in the bundle, and this he presented to her also, as a gift to provide care and comfort for her old age. The Elector cried, "Well, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer, now that satisfaction has been rendered you in such fashion, do you, for your part, prepare to give satisfaction to His Majesty the Emperor, whose attorney is standing here, for the violation of the peace he had proclaimed!" Taking off his hat and throwing it on the ground Kohlhaas said that he was ready to do so. He lifted the children once more from the ground and pressed them to his breast; then he gave them over to the bailiff of Kohlhaasenbrück, and while the latter, weeping quietly, led them away from the square, Kohlhaas advanced to the block.
He was just removing his neck-cloth and baring his chest when, throwing a hasty glance around the circle formed by the crowd, he caught sight of the familiar face of the man with blue and white plumes, who was standing quite near him between two knights whose bodies half hid him from view. With a sudden stride which surprised the guard surrounding him, Kohlhaas walked close up to the man, untying the locket from around his neck as he did so. He took out the paper, unsealed it, and read it through; then, without moving his eyes from the man with blue and white plumes, who was already beginning to indulge in sweet hopes, he stuck the paper in his mouth and swallowed it. At this sight the man with blue and white plumes was seized with convulsions and sank down unconscious. While his companions bent over him in consternation and raised him from the ground, Kohlhaas turned toward the scaffold, where his head fell under the axe of the executioner.
Here ends the story of Kohlhaas. Amid the general lamentations of the people his body was placed in a coffin, and while the bearers raised it from the ground and bore it away to the graveyard in the suburbs for decent burial, the Elector of Brandenburg called to him the sons of the dead man and dubbed them knights, telling the Arch-Chancellor that he wished them to be educated in his school for pages.
The Elector of Saxony, shattered in body and mind, returned shortly afterward to Dresden; details of his subsequent career there must be sought in history.
Some hale and happy descendants of Kohlhaas, however, were still living in Mecklenburg in the last century.
FREDERICK WILLIAM, Elector of Brandenburg.
PRINCESS NATALIE OF ORANGE, his niece,
Honorary Colonel of a regiment of Dragoons.
PRINCE FREDERICK ARTHUR OF HOMBURG,
General of cavalry.
COLONEL KOTTWITZ, of the regiment
of the Princess of Orange.
HENNINGS
COUNT TRUCHSZ Infantry Colonels.
COUNT HOHENZOLLERN, of the Elector's suite.
VON DER GOLZ }
COUNT GEORGE VON SPARREN STRANZ }
SIEGFRIED VON MÖRNER } Captains of Cavalry
COUNT REUSS }
A SERGEANT }
Officers. Corporals and troopers. Ladies- and Gentlemen-in-waiting. Pages. Lackeys. Servants. People of both sexes, young and old.
Time: 1675.
By HEINRICH VON KLEIST
Author of A Troop of the Guard and Other Poems
Scene: Fehrbellin. A garden laid out in the old French style. In the background, a palace with a terrace from which a broad stair descends. It is night.
The PRINCE OF HOMBURG sits with head bare and shirt unbuttoned, half-sleeping, half waking, under an oak, binding a wreath. The ELECTOR, ELECTRESS, PRINCESS NATALIE, COUNT HOHENZOLLERN, CAPTAIN GOLZ and others come stealthily out of the palace and look down upon him from the balustrade of the terrace. Pages with torches.
HOHENZOLLERN. The Prince of Homburg, our most valiant cousin,
Who these three days has pressed the flying Swedes
Exultant at the cavalry's forefront,
And scant of breath only today returned
To camp at Fehrbellin—your order said
That he should tarry here provisioning
Three hours at most, and move once more apace
Clear to the Hackel Hills to cope with Wrangel,
Seeking to build redoubts beside the Rhyn?
ELECTOR. 'Tis so.
HOHENZOLLERN. Now having charged the commandants
Of all his squadrons to depart the town
Obedient to the plan, sharp ten at night,
He flings himself exhausted on the straw
Like a hound panting, his exhausted limbs
To rest a little while against the fight
Which waits us at the glimmering of dawn.
ELECTOR. I heard so! Well?
HOHENZOLLERN. Now when the hour strikes
And in the stirrup now the cavalry
Expectant paws the ground before the gates—
Who still absents himself The Prince of Homburg,
Their chief. With lights they seek the valiant man,
With torches, lanterns, and they find him—where?
[He takes a torch from the hand of a page.]
As a somnambulist, look, on that bench,
Whither in sleep, as you would ne'er believe,
The moonshine lured him, vaguely occupied
Imagining himself posterity
And weaving for his brow the crown of fame.
ELECTOR. What!
HOHENZOLL. Oh, indeed! Look down here: there he sits!
[From the terrace he throws the light on the PRINCE.]
ELECTOR. In slumber sunk? Impossible!
HOHENZOLLERN. In slumber
Sunk as he is, speak but his name—he drops.
[Pause.]
ELECTRESS. Sure as I live, the youth is taken ill.
NATALIE. He needs a doctor's care—
ELECTRESS. We should give help,
Not waste time, gentlemen, meseems, in scorn.
HOHENZOLLERN (handing back the torch).
He's sound, you tender-hearted women folk,
By Jove, as sound as I! He'll make the Swede
Aware of that upon tomorrow's field.
It's nothing more, and take my word for it,
Than a perverse and silly trick of the mind.
ELECTOR. By faith, I thought it was a fairy-tale!
Follow me, friends, we'll take a closer look.
[They descend from the terrace.]
GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING (to the pages).
Back with the torches!
[Illustration: #THE ROYAL CASTLE AT BERLIN#]
HOHENZOLLERN. Leave them, leave them, friends!
These precincts might roar up to heaven in fire
And his soul be no more aware of it
Than the bright stone he wears upon his hand.
[They surround him, the pages illuminating the scene.]
ELECTOR (bending over the PRINCE).
What leaf is it he binds? Leaf of the willow?
HOHENZOLL. What! Willow-leaf, my lord? It is the bay,
Such as his eyes have noted on the portraits
Of heroes hung in Berlin's armor-hall.
ELECTOR. Where hath he found that in my sandy soil?
HOHENZOLL. The equitable gods may guess at that!
GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING.
It may be in the garden, where the gardener
Has nurtured other strange, outlandish plants.
ELECTOR. Most curious, by heaven! But what's the odds?
I know what stirs the heart of this young fool.
HOHENZOLL. Indeed! Tomorrow's clash of arms, my liege!
Astrologers, I'll wager, in his mind
Are weaving stars into a triumph wreath.
[The PRINCE regards the wreath.]
GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING. Now it is done!
HOHENZOLLERN. A shame, a mortal shame,
That there's no mirror in the neighborhood!
He would draw close to it, vain as any girl,
And try his wreath on, thus, and then again
This other way—as if it were a bonnet!
ELECTOR. By faith! But I must see how far he'll go!
[The ELECTOR takes the wreath from the PRINCE'S hand while the latter regards him, flushing. The ELECTOR thereupon twines his neck-chain about the wreath and gives it to the PRINCESS. The PRINCE rises in excitement, but the ELECTOR draws back with the PRINCESS, still holding the wreath aloft. The PRINCE follows her with outstretched arms.]
THE PRINCE (whispering).
Natalie! Oh, my girl! Oh, my beloved!
ELECTOR. Make haste! Away!
HOHENZOLLERN. What did the fool say?
GENTLEMAN-IN-WAITING. What?
[They all ascend the stair to the terrace.]
THE PRINCE. Frederick, my prince! my father!
HOHENZOLLERN. Hell and devils!
ELECTOR (backing away from him).
Open the gate for me!
THE PRINCE. Oh, mother mine!
HOHENZOLL. The raving idiot!
ELECTRESS. Whom did he call thus?
THE PRINCE (clutching at the wreath).
Beloved, why do you recoil? My Natalie!
[He snatches a glove from the PRINCESS' hand.]
HOHENZOLL. Heaven and earth! What laid he hands on there?
COURTIER. The wreath?
NATALIE. No, no!
HOHENZOLLERN (opening the door). Hither! This way, my
liege!
So the whole scene may vanish from his eye!