Tales from the German, Comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors

Kohlhaas asked him, smiling from the cart, whether he thought his person would not be safe in the house of a friend, who had invited him to his table for a day. The officer answered pleasantly and cheerfully enough, that the danger was certainly not great, and added that he would find the men by no means burdensome. Kohlhaas replied, seriously, that when he first came to Dresden, the Prince of Misnia had left it quite free to him whether he would avail himself of the guard or not, and when the officer expressed his surprise at this circumstance, and referred to the custom which had prevailed during the whole of Kohlhaas's residence at Dresden, the horse-dealer told him of the occurrence which had led to the appointment of a guard in his house. The officer assured him that the order of the Baron von Wenk, governor of the castle, who was at present head of the police, made the constant guard of his person an imperative duty, and begged him, if it was unpleasant to be so attended, to go to the seat of government himself, and rectify the error which seemed to prevail there. Kohlhaas, darting an expressive look at the officer, and determined either to bend or to break the matter, said that he would do this, descended with a beating heart from the cart, had his children carried into the passage by the servant, and repaired with the officer and his guard to the seat of government, leaving the man with the vehicle in front of the house. It chanced that Baron von Wenk was engaged in the examination of a band of Nagelschmidt's men, which had been captured in the neighbourhood of Leipzig, and had been brought in the evening before, and that these fellows were being questioned on many matters which would willingly have been heard by the knights who were with the baron when the horse-dealer and those who attended him entered the room. The baron no sooner saw him, than he went up to him, while the knights became suddenly silent, and ceased their examination, and asked him what he wanted.

The horse-dealer respectively stating his project of dining with the farmer in Lockewitz, and his wish to leave behind the soldiers, whom he did not require, the baron changed colour, and seeming as if he suppressed another speech, said that his best plan would be to stop quietly at home, and put off the dinner with the Lockewitz farmer. Then cutting short the conversation, and turning to the officer he told him, that the command which he had given him with respect to Kohlhaas, was to remain as before, and that he was not to leave the city, except under the guard of six horsemen. Kohlhaas asked whether he was a prisoner, and whether he was to believe that the amnesty solemnly granted him in the eyes of the whole world was broken; whereupon the baron, suddenly becoming as red as fire, turned to him, and walking close up to him, looked full in his eyes, and answered, "Yes, yes, yes!" He then turned his back upon him, left him standing, and again went to Nagelschmidt's men.

Kohlhaas then quitted the room, and although he saw that the only course left for him, namely, flight, was rendered difficult by the steps which he had taken, he nevertheless concluded he had acted rightly, as he now saw he was free from all obligation to conform to the articles of the amnesty. When he reached home, he ordered the horses to be taken from the cart, and accompanied by the officer entered his chamber very much dispirited. This officer, in a manner which greatly disgusted him, assured him that all turned on a misunderstanding which would soon be cleared up, while his men, at a sign which he gave them, fastened up all the outlets that led into the yard. The front entrance, as the officer assured Kohlhaas, was open to his use as before.

In the meanwhile, Nagelschmidt was so hampered on all sides by soldiers and officers of the law in the woods of the Erzgebirge, that being utterly destitute of means to carry out the part he had chosen, he hit upon the thought of really drawing Kohlhaas into his interest. He had learned with tolerable accuracy, through a traveller who passed on the road, the state of the suit at Dresden, and was of opinion, that in spite of the open hostility which existed between them, it would be possible to induce the horse-dealer to enter into a new alliance with him. He therefore sent a man to him, with a scarcely legible letter, to the effect, that if he would come to the Altenburg territory, and resume the conduct of the band, who had assembled there, out of the relics of the one that had been dismissed, he would furnish him with horses, men, and money, to assist him in flying from his prison at Dresden. At the same time, he promised to be better and more obedient in future than he had been; and to prove his fidelity and devotion, he offered to come to Dresden himself and effect Kohlhaas's liberation. Now the fellow to whom this letter was entrusted had the misfortune to fall into convulsions of a dangerous sort, such as he had been subject to from his youth, close to Dresden, and the consequence was, that the letter which he carried in his doublet, was discovered by people who came to assist him, and that he himself, as soon as he had recovered, was arrested, and removed to the seat of government, attended by a numerous guard. The Governor von Wenk had no sooner read the letter than he hastened to the elector, in whose castle he found the two von Tronkas (the chamberlain having recovered of his wounds) and Count Kallheim, president of the chancery. These gentlemen were of opinion, that Kohlhaas should be arrested without delay, and prosecuted on the ground of a secret understanding with Nagelschmidt, since, as they attempted to prove, such a letter could not have been written, had not others been previously sent by the horse-dealer, and had not some criminal compact been formed, for the perpetration of new atrocities. The elector firmly refused to violate the free conduct which he had granted to Kohlhaas, on the mere ground of this letter. Nay, according to his opinion, it rather showed, that no previous communication had existed between Kohlhaas and Nagelschmidt, and all that he would resolve upon, and that after much delay, was that, according to the suggestion of the president, the letter should be sent to Kohlhaas by Nagelschmidt's man, just as if the fellow was perfectly at liberty, and that then it should be seen whether Kohlhaas would answer it. The man, who had been put in prison, was accordingly brought to the seat of government on the following morning, when the governor of the castle restored him his letter, and, promising that he should be free, and exempt from the punishment he had incurred, told him to give it to the horse-dealer as if nothing had happened. Without more ado, the fellow lent himself to the mean stratagem, and as if by stealth, entered Kohlhaas's room on the pretext of selling some crabs, with which the officer had provided him in the market-place. Kohlhaas, who read the letter while the children played with the crabs, would certainly, under the circumstances, have taken the fellow by the collar, and delivered him up to the soldiers, who stood at his door, but as, in the present disposition of people towards him, such a step might be interpreted in more than one way, and he was fully convinced that nothing in the world could help him out of the difficulty in which he was placed, he looked mournfully at the fellow's well-known face, asked him where he lived, and ordered him to come again in an hour or two, when he would communicate the resolution he had taken with respect to his master. He told Sternbald, who chanced to enter the room, to buy some crabs of the fellow he found there, and this having been done, and the two men having parted without recognition, he sat down and wrote a letter to Nagelschmidt to the following effect: In the first place he accepted his offer of the command of the band in Altenburg, and in the next told him to send him a waggon with two horses to the Neustadt by Dresden, to free him from the temporary prison in which he was placed with his children. Two horses more, he said, for the sake of speed would be wanted on the road to Wittenberg, by which circuitous route, for certain reasons, too long to specify, he could alone come to him. He represented the soldiers who guarded him as open to bribery, but nevertheless, in case force should be necessary, he desired the presence of a few, stout, active, well-armed fellows in the Neustadt. To defray the expenses of all these preparations he would send by the man a rouleau containing twenty gold crowns, about the expenditure of which he would come to an account with him when the affair was settled. His presence in Dresden on the occasion of his liberation he prohibited as unnecessary, nay, he gave the express order that he should remain in the territory of Altenburg, as the temporary leader of the band, which could not well do without a captain. When the messenger came towards the evening he gave him this letter, and rewarding him liberally, exhorted him to take the greatest care of it. His design was to proceed to Hamburg with his five children, and there to embark for the Levant or the East Indies, or as far as the sky might cover other men than those he knew, for his soul, which was now bowed down with grief, had given up the notion of getting the horses, to say nothing of his repugnance to make a common cause with Nagelschmidt.

Scarcely had the fellow delivered this answer to the castellan than the high chancellor was removed, the president, Count Kallheim, was appointed chief of the tribunal in his stead, and Kohlhaas, being arrested by a cabinet order of the elector, was thrown into the city prison, heavily laden with chains. Proceedings were commenced against him on the ground of the letter, which was posted up at all the corners of the town; and when, before the bar of the tribunal, to the question of the counsel, who presented him this letter, whether he recognised the handwriting, he answered "Yes," but to the question whether he had any thing to say in his defence, he with downcast eyes answered "No." He was condemned to have his flesh torn with red-hot pincers, and his body quartered and 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 hands of arbitrary power and claimed him as a Brandenburg subject in the electoral chancery, through a note sent for that purpose. For the brave Captain Heinrich von Geusau had told him, during a walk on the banks of the Spree, the history of this strange and not utterly abandoned man. On this occasion, urged by the questions of the astonished elector, he could not avoid mentioning the wrong which had been done to his own person, through the improper acts of the high chancellor, Count Siegfried von Kallheim. The elector, being highly indignant at this, demanded an explanation of the high chancellor, and finding that his relationship to the house of Tronka had been the cause of all the mischief, dismissed him at once with many signs of displeasure, and appointed Heinrich von Geusau chancellor in his place.

Now it happened that the kingdom of Poland, while for some cause or other it was in a hostile position against Saxony, made repeated and pressing demands to the Elector of Brandenburg to unite against Saxony in one common cause. This led the High Chancellor Geusau, who was no novice in such matters, to hope that he could fulfil his sovereign's wish of doing justice to Kohlhaas at any price, without placing the general peace in a more critical position than the consideration due to an individual would justify. Hence the high chancellor, alleging that the proceedings had been arbitrary, and alike displeasing to God and man, not only demanded the immediate and unconditional delivery of Kohlhaas, that in case he was guilty he might be tried according to Brandenburg laws, on a complaint which the court of Dresden might make through an attorney at Berlin, but also required passports for an attorney whom the elector wished to send to Dresden, to obtain justice for Kohlhaas against Squire Wenzel von Tronka, on account of the wrong which had been done the former, on Saxon soil, by the detention of his horses and other acts of violence which cried aloud to Heaven. The chamberlain, Herr Conrad, who on the change of office in Saxony had been nominated president of the state chancery, and who for many reasons did not wish to offend the court of Berlin, in the difficulty in which he now found himself, answered in the name of his sovereign, who was much dejected at the note he had received, that the unfriendly and unfair spirit in which the right of the court of Dresden to try Kohlhaas, according to law, for offences committed in the country, had been questioned, had created great astonishment, especially when it was well known that he held a large piece of ground in the Saxon metropolis, and did not deny that he was a Saxon citizen. Nevertheless, as Poland to enforce her claims had already collected an army of 5000 men on the borders of Saxony, and the high chancellor, Heinrich von Geusau, declared that Kohlhaasenbrück, the place from which the horse-dealer took his name, lay in the Brandenburg territory, and that the execution of the sentence of death that had been declared would be considered a violation of the law of nations, the elector, by the advice of the chamberlain, Herr Conrad himself, who wished to retreat out of the affair, called Prince Christian of Misnia from his estates, and was induced by a few words from this intelligent man to deliver Kohlhaas to the court of Berlin, in compliance with the request that had been made.

The prince, who, although he was little pleased with the late unseemly proceedings, was obliged to undertake the prosecution of the Kohlhaas affair, in compliance with the wish of his embarrassed sovereign, asked him on what ground he meant to prosecute the horse-dealer, in the chamber council at Berlin. To the fatal letter to Nagelschmidt reference could not be made, so doubtful and obscure were the circumstances under which it was written, neither could the early plunderings and incendiarisms be mentioned on account of the placards in which they had been pardoned.

The elector, therefore, resolved to lay before the Emperor of Vienna a statement of the armed attack of Kohlhaas upon Saxony, to complain of the breach of the public peace, which he had established, and to request those who were bound by no amnesty to prosecute Kohlhaas in the Berlin court through an imperial prosecutor.

In eight days the horse-dealer, chained as he was, was placed in a cart and transported to Berlin with his five children (who had been got together again out of the orphan and foundling asylums) by the night Friedrich von Malzahn, whom the Elector of Brandenburg had sent to Dresden with six troopers.

Now it chanced that the Elector of Saxony, at the invitation of the seneschal (Landdrost) Count Aloysius von Kallheim, who held considerable property on the borders of Saxony, had gone to Dahme to a great hunt, which had been appointed for his recreation, accompanied by the chamberlain, Herr Conrad, and his wife the Lady Heloise, daughter of the seneschal and sister of the president, besides other fine ladies and gentlemen, hunting-attendants, and nobles. All this party, covered with dust from hunting, was seated at table under the cover of some tents adorned with flags, which had been set up on a hill right across the road, waited upon by pages and young nobles, and recreated by the sound of cheerful music, which proceeded from the trunk of an oak, when the horse-dealer, attended by his army of troopers, came slowly along the road from Dresden.

The sickness of one of Kohlhaas's little delicate children had compelled the Knight von Malzahn, who accompanied him, to remain for three days at Herzberg – a fact which he did not deem it necessary to communicate to the government at Dresden, feeling that he was only responsible to his own prince. The elector, who with his breast half-uncovered, and his plumed hat adorned with fir-twigs, sat by the Lady Heloise – his first love in the days of early youth – said, elevated by the pleasure of the feast, that sparkled round him: "Come let us give the unfortunate man, whoever he may be, this cup of wine!" The Lady Heloise, casting a noble glance at him, arose at once, and laying the whole table under contribution, filled a silver vessel, which a page handed to her, with fruit, cakes, and bread. The whole party, with refreshments of all kinds, had already thronged from the tent, when the seneschal met them with a confused countenance and bade them stop. To the elector, who asked with surprise what had happened thus to confound the seneschal, the latter answered, stammering and with his head turned towards the chamberlain, that Kohlhaas was in the cart. At this piece of intelligence, which astonished every body, as it was generally known that Kohlhaas had set off six days before, the chamberlain, Conrad, took his goblet of wine, and turning towards the tent poured it into the dust. The elector, deeply colouring, placed his on a salver, which a page presented to him for that purpose, at a hint from the chamberlain; and while the knight Friedrich von Malzahn, respectfully greeting the company, whom he did not know, passed slowly through the tent-ropes that ran across the way, in the direction of Dahme, the party, at the invitation of the seneschal, returned to the tent without taking further notice.

As soon as the elector was seated, the seneschal privately sent to Dahme to warn the magistracy there to make the horse-dealer pass on immediately; but as the knight had declared his wish of passing the night in the place, on the plea that the day had already advanced too far to allow of further travel, they were obliged to bring him without noise to a farm which belonged to the magistracy, and which stood by the road-side concealed by bushes.

Towards evening, when the elector's party had forgotten the whole affair, their thoughts having been dissipated by the wine, and the pleasures of a luxurious supper, the seneschal proposed that they should once more start for a herd of deer which had made its appearance. The whole party seized on the proposal with delight, and armed with their rifles went in pairs over hedges and ditches into the adjoining forest, and the consequence was that the elector and the Lady Heloise, who hung on his arm to witness the spectacle, were to their surprise immediately conducted by a messenger, who had been appointed to attend them, through the court of the very house at which Kohlhaas and the Brandenburg troops were stopping.

The lady, when she heard this, said: "Come, gracious sovereign, come!" adding, as she playfully concealed in his doublet the chain which hung from his neck, "let us slip into the farm, before our troop comes up, and see the strange man who is passing the night there."

The elector, changing colour, seized her hand and said: "Heloise, what notion has possessed you?" But when, perceiving his surprise, she answered that no one would recognise him in his hunting dress, and also, at the very same moment, two hunting attendants, who had already satisfied their curiosity, came out of the house and said, that in consequence of an arrangement of the seneschals, neither the knight nor the horse-dealer knew of whom consisted the party assembled near Dahme, the elector, smiling, pressed his hat over his eyes, and said: "Folly, thou rulest the world, and thy throne is the mouth of a pretty woman."

Kohlhaas was sitting on a heap of straw, with his back against the wall, feeding the child that had fallen sick at Herzberg, with rolls and milk, when his noble visitors entered the farm-house. The lady, to introduce the conversation, asked him who he was, what was the matter with the child, what crime he had committed, and whither they were conducting him under such an escort. He doffed his leather cap, and, without ceasing from his occupation, gave her a short, but satisfactory answer.

The elector, who stood behind the huntsman, and observed a little leaden case that hung from Michael's neck by a silken thread, asked him, as there was nothing better to talk about, what this meant, and what was kept in it.

"Ah, your worship," said Kohlhaas, detaching it from his neck, opening it, and taking out a little slip of paper fastened with a wafer, "there is something very peculiar about this case. It is about seven months ago, on the very day after my wife's burial, when I had set out from Kohlhaasenbrück, as perhaps you know, to seize the person of Squire von Tronka, who had done me much wrong, that for some negotiation, unknown to me, the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg had a meeting in Jüterboch, a market town, through which my way led me. When they had settled every thing according to their wishes, they went through the streets of the town, conversing in a friendly manner, that they might see the fair, which was held with due merriment. Presently they came to a gipsy woman, who sat upon a stool, and uttered prophesies to the people who surrounded her, out of an almanack.

"This woman they asked, jestingly, whether she had any thing pleasant to tell them. I, who had put up at an inn, with all my band, and chanced to be present at the spot when this occurrence took place, standing at the entrance to the church, could not hear, through the crowd, what the strange woman said to the electors. When the people whispered, laughingly, in each other's ears, that she would not communicate her science to any body, and crowded thickly together on account of the spectacle that was preparing, I got upon a bench, which had been hewn out in the entrance to the church, not so much because I was curious myself, as because I would make way for those that were. Scarcely had I, from this elevation, taken a full survey of the electors and the woman, who sat before them on the stool, and seemed to be scribbling something, than she suddenly raised herself on her crutches, and, looking round the people, fixed her eyes upon me, who had not spoken a single word to her, and had never cared for such sciences in my life.

"Pressing towards me, through the dense crowd, she said: 'Ah, if the gentleman wishes to know, he had better ask you.' Then, your worship, with her dry, bony hands she gave me this slip. All the people turned round to me, and I said, perfectly astonished, 'Why, mother – what sort of a present is this?' After all sorts of unintelligible stuff, among which, to my great surprise, I heard my own name, she replied, 'It is an amulet, thou horse-dealer, Kohlhaas, keep it well, it will one day save thy life.' And so saying, she vanished. Now!" continued Kohlhaas, good humouredly, "to tell the truth, sharply as matters have been going on in Dresden, they have not cost me my life; and as for Berlin, the future will show me how I get on there, and whether I shall come off well."

At these words the elector seated himself on a bench, and, although to the inquiry of the astonished lady, what was the matter with him, he answered, "Nothing, nothing at all" – he, nevertheless, fell senseless upon the ground, before she had time to run up to him and catch him in her arms.

The Knight von Malzahn, who, on some business or other, entered the room at this moment, said: "Good God, what ails the gentleman?" while the lady cried out, "Water, bring water!"

The huntsmen raised the elector from the ground and carried him to a bed in an adjoining room, and the consternation of all reached its height, when the chamberlain, who had been fetched by a page, declared, after many futile endeavours to restore the elector to his senses, that there were all the signs of apoplexy.

The seneschal, while the cup-bearer sent a messenger on horseback to Luckau to fetch a physician, caused the elector to be placed in a vehicle, as soon as he opened his eyes, and to be taken, slowly, to his hunting castle in the neighbourhood. The consequence of this journey was two fainting fits after his arrival at the castle, and it was late on the following morning, when the physician from Luckau had arrived, that he recovered in some degree, still with the decided symptoms of an impending nervous fever. As soon as he had regained his senses he raised himself in his bed, and his first inquiry was for Kohlhaas.

The chamberlain, who misunderstood his question, said, seizing his hand, that he need no longer trouble himself about this terrible man, since, as had been designed, he had remained at the farm at Dahme, guarded by the Brandenburg escort, after the sudden and incomprehensible mischance which had occurred. Assuring him of his warmest sympathy, and also that he had reproached his wife most bitterly for her unwarrantable heedlessness in bringing him in contact with the man, he asked what there was so strange and monstrous in the conversation to strike him thus.

The elector said he could only confess that the sight of a worthless slip of paper, worn by the man in a leaden case, had been the cause of the unpleasant occurrence. In explanation of this circumstance he uttered much which the chamberlain did not understand, suddenly assured him, as he pressed his hand, that the possession of this slip would be of the utmost importance, and finally entreated him to mount on horseback without delay, to ride to Dalheim, and to purchase the slip from Kohlhaas at any price.

The chamberlain, who had difficulty in concealing his embarrassment, represented to him, that if this slip was of any value to him, it would be absolutely necessary to conceal the fact from Kohlhaas, since, if he got a hint of it through any heedless expression, all the wealth of the elector would be insufficient to get it out of the hands of a fellow so insatiable in his vengeance. To calm him, he added that some other means must be devised, and that perhaps it would be possible to gain the slip to which he attached so much importance, by cunning and through the medium of a third indifferent party, as the criminal did not set any value on it.

The elector, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, asked whether it would not be possible with this intent to send to Dahme, and to delay the further transport of the horse-dealer until the slip, in some way or other, was secured.

The chamberlain, who could not trust his senses, replied that in all probability the horse-dealer had unfortunately left Dahme already, and was already over the boundary and on Brandenburg soil, where every endeavour to impede his progress, or to turn him back, must lead to the most unpleasant and lengthened difficulties – such difficulties, indeed, as it might be impossible to get over.

When the elector, with a gesture of utter despair, threw himself back on his cushion in silence, the chamberlain asked him what it was that the slip contained, and by what strange and inexplicable chance he knew that the contents concerned him.

Casting equivocal glances at the chamberlain, whose willingness to oblige him he doubted, the elector made no answer, but lay quite stiff, yet with heart uneasily beating, while his eyes were fixed on the corner of the handkerchief, which, immersed in thought, he held in his hands. All at once he ordered him to call into the chamber the hunting-page (Jagd-junker) Von Stein, an active and sharp-witted young gentleman, whom he had often employed on secret affairs, on the pretext that he had business to settle with him of quite a different nature.

After he had set forth the whole affair to this page, and had informed him of the importance of the slip, now in the possession of Kohlhaas, he asked him whether he was willing to earn an eternal claim to his friendship by getting this slip before Kohlhaas reached Berlin.

The page as soon as he, in some degree, understood the affair, strange as it was, declared that all his powers were at the service of the elector, whereupon the latter commissioned him to ride after Kohlhaas, and in case money would not suffice, as probably it would not, to offer him in a prudently managed discourse, life and liberty as the price of the slip; nay, if he insisted upon it, to supply him at once, though cautiously, with horses, people, and money, to assist him in escaping from the hands of the Brandenburg troopers who escorted him. The page, having obtained from the elector a written authority in his own hand, set off with some attendants, and not allowing his horses any breathing time, he had the good luck to overtake Kohlhaas at a village on the border, where, with the Knight von Malzahn and his five children, he was partaking of a dinner, that was spread before the door of a house in the open air. The Knight von Malzahn, to whom the page introduced himself as a foreigner, who wished to see the remarkable man on his journey, even anticipated his wishes, as he compelled him to sit down to the meal, at the same time introducing him to Kohlhaas. As the knight had affairs to mind, which caused him to absent himself every now and then, and the troopers were dining at a table on the other side of the house, the page soon found an opportunity of telling the horse-dealer who he was, and explaining the particular object of his mission.

The horse-dealer, who had already learned the name and rank of the person who had fainted in the farm-house at Dahme at the sight of the case, and who wanted nothing more to complete the astonishment which the discovery had caused, than an insight into the secrets of the case, which for many reasons he had determined not to open out of mere curiosity, – the horse-dealer, we say, mindful of the unhandsome and unprincely treatment which he had experienced at Dresden, in spite of his readiness to make every possible sacrifice, declared that he intended to keep the case. To the question of the page, what could induce him to utter so singular a refusal, when nothing less than life and liberty was offered him, Kohlhaas replied: