The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04

The Prince, after a hasty glance which took Kohlhaas in from head to foot, looked through the papers in the wallet and had him explain the nature of a certificate which he found there executed by the court at Lützen, concerning the deposit made in favor of the treasury of the Electorate. After he had further tested him with various questions about his children, his wealth, and the sort of life he intended to lead in the future, in order to find out what kind of man he was, and had concluded that in every respect they might set their minds at rest about him, he gave him back the documents and said that nothing now stood in the way of his lawsuit, and that, in order to institute it, he should just apply directly to the Lord High Chancellor of the Tribunal, Count Wrede himself. "In the meantime," said the Prince after a pause, crossing over to the window and gazing in amazement at the people gathered in front of the house, "you will be obliged to consent to a guard for the first few days, to protect you in your house as well as when you go out!" Kohlhaas looked down disconcerted, and was silent. "Well, no matter," said the Prince, leaving the window; "whatever happens, you have yourself to blame for it;" and with that he turned again toward the door with the intention of leaving the house. Kohlhaas, who had reflected, said "My lord, do as you like! If you will give me your word that the guard will be withdrawn as soon as I wish it, I have no objection to this measure." The Prince answered, "That is understood, of course." He informed the three foot-soldiers, who were appointed for this purpose, that the man in whose house they were to remain was free, and that it was merely for his protection that they were to follow him when he went out; he then saluted the horse-dealer with a condescending wave of the hand, and took his leave.

Toward midday Kohlhaas went to Count Wrede, Lord High Chancellor of the Tribunal; he was escorted by his three foot-soldiers and followed by an innumerable crowd, who, having been warned by the police, did not try to harm him in any way. The Chancellor received him in his antechamber with benignity and kindness, conversed with him for two whole hours, and after he had had the entire course of the affair related to him from beginning to end, referred Kohlhaas to a celebrated lawyer in the city who was a member of the Tribunal, so that he might have the complaint drawn up and presented immediately.

Kohlhaas, without further delay, betook himself to the lawyer's house and had the suit drawn up exactly like the original one which had been quashed. He demanded the punishment of the Squire according to law, the restoration of the horses to their former condition, and compensation for the damages he had sustained as well as for those suffered by his groom, Herse, who had fallen at Mühlberg in behalf of the latter's old mother. When this was done Kohlhaas returned home, accompanied by the crowd that still continued to gape at him, firmly resolved in his mind not to leave the house again unless called away by important business.

In the mean time the Squire had been released from his imprisonment in Wittenberg, and after recovering from a dangerous attack of erysipelas which had caused inflammation of his foot, had been summoned by the Supreme Court in peremptory terms to present himself in Dresden to answer the suit instituted against him by the horse-dealer, Kohlhaas, with regard to a pair of black horses which had been unlawfully taken from him and worked to death. The Tronka brothers, the Chamberlain and the Cup-bearer, cousins of the Squire, at whose house he alighted, received him with the greatest bitterness and contempt. They called him a miserable good-for-nothing, who had brought shame and disgrace on the whole family, told him that he would inevitably lose his suit, and called upon him to prepare at once to produce the black horses, which he would be condemned to fatten to the scornful laughter of the world. The Squire answered in a weak and trembling voice that he was more deserving of pity than any other man on earth. He swore that he had known but little about the whole cursed affair which had plunged him into misfortune, and that the castellan and the steward were to blame for everything, because they, without his knowledge or consent, had used the horses in getting in the crops and, by overworking them, partly in their own fields, had rendered them unfit for further use. He sat down as he said this and begged them not to mortify and insult him and thus wantonly cause a relapse of the illness from which he had but recently recovered.

Since there was nothing else to be done, the next day, at the request of their cousin, the Squire, the lords Hinz and Kunz, who possessed estates in the neighborhood of Tronka Castle, which had been burned down, wrote to their stewards and to the farmers living there for information about the black horses which had been lost on that unfortunate day and not heard of since. But on account of the complete destruction of the castle and the massacre of most of the inhabitants, all that they could learn was that a servant, driven by blows dealt with the flat of the incendiary's sword, had rescued them from the burning shed in which they were standing, but that afterward, to the question where he should take them and what he should do with them, he had been answered by a kick from the savage madman. The Squire's gouty old housekeeper, who had fled to Meissen, assured the latter, in reply to his written inquiry, that on the morning after that horrible night the servant had gone off with the horses toward the Brandenburg border, but all inquiries which were made there proved vain, and some error seemed to lie at the bottom of this information, as the Squire had no servant whose home was in Brandenburg or even on the road thither. Some men from Dresden, who had been in Wilsdruf a few days after the burning of Tronka Castle, declared that, at the time named, a groom had arrived in that place, leading two horses by the halter, and, as the animals were very sick and could go no further, he had left them in the cow-stable of a shepherd who had offered to restore them to good condition. For a variety of reasons it seemed very probable that these were the black horses for which search was being made, but persons coming from Wilsdruf declared that the shepherd had already traded them off again, no one knew to whom; and a third rumor, the originator of which could not be discovered, even asserted that the two horses had in the mean time passed peacefully away and been buried in the carrion pit at Wilsdruf.

This turn of affairs, as can be easily understood, was the most pleasing to the lords Hinz and Kunz, as they were thus relieved of the necessity of fattening the blacks in their stables, the Squire, their cousin, no longer having any stables of his own. They wished, however, for the sake of absolute security, to verify this circumstance. Sir Wenzel Tronka, therefore, in his capacity as hereditary feudal lord with the right of judicature, addressed a letter to the magistrates at Wilsdruf, in which, after a minute description of the black horses, which, as he said, had been intrusted to his care and lost through an accident, he begged them to be so obliging as to ascertain their present whereabouts, and to urge and admonish the owner, whoever he might be, to deliver them at the stables of the Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, in Dresden, and be generously reimbursed for all costs. Accordingly, a few days later, the man to whom the shepherd in Wilsdruf had sold them did actually appear with the horses, thin and staggering, tied to the tailboard of his cart, and led them to the market-place in Dresden. As the bad luck of Sir Wenzel and still more of honest Kohlhaas would have it, however, the man happened to be the knacker from Döbeln.

As soon as Sir Wenzel, in the presence of the Chamberlain, his cousin, learned from an indefinite rumor that a man had arrived in the city with two black horses which had escaped from the burning of Tronka Castle, both gentlemen, accompanied by a few servants hurriedly collected in the house, went to the palace square where the man had stopped, intending, if the two animals proved to be those belonging to Kohlhaas, to make good the expenses the man had incurred and take the horses home with them. But how disconcerted were the knights to see a momentarily increasing crowd of people, who had been attracted by the spectacle, already standing around the two-wheeled cart to which the horses were fastened! Amid uninterrupted laughter they were calling to one another that the horses, on account of which the whole state was tottering, already belonged to the knacker! The Squire who had gone around the cart and gazed at the miserable animals, which seemed every moment about to expire, said in an embarrassed way that those were not the horses which he had taken from Kohlhaas; but Sir Kunz, the Chamberlain, casting at him a look of speechless rage which, had it been of iron, would have dashed him to pieces, and throwing back his cloak to disclose his orders and chain, stepped up to the knacker and asked if those were the black horses which the shepherd at Wilsdruf had gained possession of, and for which Squire Wenzel Tronka, to whom they belonged, had made requisition through the magistrate of that place.

The knacker who, with a pail of water in his hand, was busy watering a fat, sturdy horse that was drawing his cart asked—"The blacks?" Then he put down the pail, took the bit out of the horse's mouth, and explained that the black horses which were tied to the tailboard of the cart had been sold to him by the swineherd in Hainichen; where the latter had obtained them and whether they came from the shepherd at Wilsdruf—that he did not know. "He had been told," he continued, taking up the pail again and propping it between the pole of the cart and his knee "he had been told by the messenger of the court at Wilsdruf to take the horses to the house of the Tronkas in Dresden, but the Squire to whom he had been directed was named Kunz." With these words he turned around with the rest of the water which the horse had left in the pail, and emptied it out on the pavement. The Chamberlain, who was beset by the stares of the laughing, jeering crowd and could not induce the fellow, who was attending to his business with phlegmatic zeal, to look at him, said that he was the Chamberlain Kunz Tronka. The black horses, however, which he was to get possession of, had to be those belonging to the Squire, his cousin; they must have been given to the shepherd at Wilsdruf by a stable-man who had run away from Tronka Castle at the time of the fire; moreover, they must be the two horses that originally had belonged to the horse-dealer Kohlhaas. He asked the fellow, who was standing there with his legs apart, pulling up his trousers, whether he did not know something about all this. Had not the swineherd of Hainichen, he went on, perhaps purchased these horses from the shepherd at Wilsdruf, or from a third person, who in turn had bought them from the latter?—for everything depended on this circumstance.

The knacker replied that he had been ordered to go with the black horses to Dresden and was to receive the money for them in the house of the Tronkas. He did not understand what the Squire was talking about, and whether it was Peter or Paul, or the shepherd in Wilsdruf, who had owned them before the swineherd in Hainichen, was all one to him so long as they had not been stolen; and with this he went off, with his whip across his broad back, to a public house which stood in the square, with the intention of getting some breakfast, as he was very hungry.

The Chamberlain, who for the life of him didn't know what he should do with the horses which the swineherd of Hainichen had sold to the knacker of Döbeln, unless they were those on which the devil was riding through Saxony, asked the Squire to say something; but when the latter with white, trembling lips replied that it would be advisable to buy the black horses whether they belonged to Kohlhaas or not, the Chamberlain, cursing the father and mother who had given birth to the Squire, stepped aside out of the crowd and threw back his cloak, absolutely at a loss to know what he should do or leave undone. Defiantly determined not to leave the square just because the rabble were staring at him derisively and with their handkerchiefs pressed tight over their mouths seemed to be waiting only for him to depart before bursting out into laughter, he called to Baron Wenk, an acquaintance who happened to be riding by, and begged him to stop at the house of the Lord High Chancellor, Count Wrede, and through the latter's instrumentality to have Kohlhaas brought there to look at the black horses.

When the Baron, intent upon this errand, entered the chamber of the Lord High Chancellor, it so happened that Kohlhaas was just then present, having been summoned by a messenger of the court to give certain explanations of which they stood in need concerning the deposit in Lützen. While the Chancellor, with an annoyed look, rose from his chair and asked the horse-dealer, whose person was unknown to the Baron, to step to one side with his papers, the latter informed him of the dilemma in which the lords Tronka found themselves. He explained that the knacker from Döbeln, acting on a defective requisition from the court at Wilsdruf, had appeared with horses whose condition was so frightful that Squire Wenzel could not help hesitating to pronounce them the ones belonging to Kohlhaas. In case they were to be taken from the knacker not-withstanding, and an attempt made to restore them to good condition in the stables of the knights, an ocular inspection by Kohlhaas would first be necessary in order to establish the aforesaid circumstance beyond doubt. "Will you therefore have the goodness," he concluded, "to have a guard fetch the horse-dealer from his house and conduct him to the market-place where the horses are standing?" The Lord High Chancellor, taking his glasses from his nose, said that the Baron was laboring under a double delusion—first, in thinking that the fact in question could be ascertained only by means of an ocular inspection by Kohlhaas, and then, in imagining that he, the Chancellor, possessed the authority to have Kohlhaas taken by a guard wherever the Squire happened to wish. With this he presented to him Kohlhaas who was standing behind him, and sitting down and putting on his glasses again, begged him to apply to the horse-dealer himself in the matter.

Kohlhaas, whose expression gave no hint of what was going on in his mind, said that he was ready to follow the Baron to the market-place and inspect the black horses which the knacker had brought to the city. As the disconcerted Baron faced around toward him, Kohlhaas stepped up to the table of the Chancellor, and, after taking time to explain to him, with the help of the papers in his wallet, several matters concerning the deposit in Lützen, took his leave. The Baron, who had walked over to the window, his face suffused with a deep blush, likewise made his adieux, and both, escorted by the three foot-soldiers assigned by the Prince of Meissen, took their way to the Palace square attended by a great crowd of people.

In the mean time the Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, in spite of the protests of several friends who had joined him, had stood his ground among the people, opposite the knacker of Döbeln. As soon as the Baron and the horse-dealer appeared he went up to the latter and, holding his sword proudly and ostentatiously under his arm, asked if the horses standing behind the wagon were his.

The horse-dealer, turning modestly toward the gentleman who had asked him the question and who was unknown to him, touched his hat; then, without answering, he walked toward the knacker's cart, surrounded by all the knights. The animals were standing there on unsteady legs, with heads bowed down to the ground, making no attempt to eat the hay which the knacker had placed before them. Kohlhaas stopped a dozen feet away, and after a hasty glance turned back again to the Chamberlain, saying, "My lord, the knacker is quite right; the horses which are fastened to his cart belong to me!" As he spoke he looked around at the whole circle of knights, touched his hat once more, and left the square, accompanied by his guard.

At these words the Chamberlain, with a hasty step that made the plume of his helmet tremble, strode up to the knacker and threw him a purse full of money. And while the latter, holding the purse in his hand, combed the hair back from his forehead with a leaden comb and stared at the money, Sir Kunz ordered a groom to untie the horses and lead them home. The groom, at the summons of his master, left a group of his friends and relatives among the crowd; his face flushed slightly, but he did, nevertheless, go up to the horses, stepping over a big puddle that had formed at their feet. No sooner, however, had he taken hold of the halter to untie them, than Master Himboldt, his cousin, seized him by the arm, and with the words, "You shan't touch the knacker's jades!" hurled him away from the cart. Then, stepping back unsteadily over the puddle, the Master turned toward the Chamberlain, who was standing there, speechless with astonishment at this incident, and added that he must get a knacker's man to do him such a service as that. The Chamberlain, foaming with rage, stared at Master Himboldt for a moment, then turned about and, over the heads of the knights who surrounded him, called for the guard. When, in obedience to the orders of Baron Wenk, an officer with some of the Elector's bodyguards had arrived from the palace, Sir Kunz gave him a short account of the shameful way in which the burghers of the city permitted themselves to instigate revolt, and called upon the officer to place the ringleader, Master Himboldt, under arrest. Seizing the Master by the chest, the Chamberlain accused him of having maltreated and thrust away from the cart the groom who, at his orders, was unhitching the black horses. The Master, freeing himself from the Chamberlain's grasp with a skilful twist which forced the latter to step back, cried, "My lord, showing a boy of twenty what he ought to do is not instigating him to revolt! Ask him whether, contrary to all that is customary and decent, he cares to have anything to do with those horses that are tied to the cart. If he wants to do it after what I have said, well and good. For all I care, he may flay and skin them now."

At these words the Chamberlain turned round to the groom and asked him if he had any scruples about fulfilling his command to untie the horses which belonged to Kohlhaas and lead them home. When the groom, stepping back among the citizens, answered timidly that the horses must be made honorable once more before that could be expected of him, the Chamberlain followed him, tore from the young man's head the hat which was decorated with the badge of his house, and, after trampling it under his feet, drew his sword and with furious blows drove the groom instantly from the square and from his service. Master Himboldt cried, "Down with the bloodthirsty madman, friends!" And while the citizens, outraged at this scene, crowded together and forced back the guard, he came up behind the Chamberlain and threw him down, tore off his cloak, collar, and helmet, wrenched the sword from his hand, and dashed it with a furious fling far away across the square.

In vain did the Squire Wenzel, as he worked his way out of the crowd, call to the knights to go to his cousin's aid; even before they had started to rescue him, they had been so scattered by the rush of the mob that the Chamberlain, who in falling had injured his head, was exposed to the full wrath of the crowd. The only thing that saved him was the appearance of a troop of mounted soldiers who chanced to be crossing the square, and whom the officer of the Elector's body-guards called to his assistance. The officer, after dispersing the crowd, seized the furious Master Himboldt, and, while some of the troopers bore him off to prison, two friends picked up the unfortunate Chamberlain, who was covered with blood, and carried him home.

Such was the unfortunate outcome of the well-meant and honest attempt to procure the horse-dealer satisfaction for the injustice that had been committed against him. The knacker of Döbeln, whose business was concluded, and who did not wish to delay any longer, tied the horses to a lamppost, since the crowd was beginning to scatter, and there they remained the whole day through without any one's bothering about them, an object of mockery for the street-arabs and loafers. Finally, since they lacked any sort of care and attention, the police were obliged to take them in hand, and, toward evening, the knacker of Dresden was called to carry them off to the knacker's house outside the city to await further instructions.

This incident, as little as the horse-dealer was in reality to blame for it, nevertheless awakened throughout the country, even among the more moderate and better class of people, a sentiment extremely dangerous to the success of his lawsuit. The relation of this man to the state was felt to be quite intolerable and, in private houses as well as in public places, the opinion gained ground that it would be better to commit an open injustice against him and quash the whole lawsuit anew, rather than, for the mere sake of satisfying his mad obstinacy, to accord him in so trivial a matter justice which he had wrung from them by deeds of violence.

To complete the ruin of poor Kohlhaas, it was the Lord High Chancellor himself, animated by too great probity, and a consequent hatred of the Tronka family, who helped strengthen and spread this sentiment. It was highly improbable that the horses, which were now being cared for by the knacker of Dresden, would ever be restored to the condition they were in when they left the stables at Kohlhaasenbrück. However, granted that this might be possible by skilful and constant care, nevertheless the disgrace which, as a result of the existing circumstances, had fallen upon the Squire's family was so great that, in consideration of the political importance which the house possessed—being, as it was, one of the oldest and noblest families in the land—nothing seemed more just and expedient than to arrange a money indemnity for the horses. In spite of this, a few days later, when the President, Count Kallheim, in the name of the Chamberlain, who was deterred by his sickness, sent a letter to the Chancellor containing this proposition, the latter did indeed send a communication to Kohlhaas in which he admonished him not to decline such a proposition should it be made to him; but in a short and rather curt answer to the President himself the Chancellor begged him not to bother him with private commissions in this matter and advised the Chamberlain to apply to the horse-dealer himself, whom he described as a very just and modest man. The horse-dealer, whose will was, in fact, broken by the incident which had occurred in the market-place, was, in conformity with the advice of the Lord Chancellor, only waiting for an overture on the part of the Squire or his relatives in order to meet them half-way with perfect willingness and forgiveness for all that had happened; but to make this overture entailed too great a sacrifice of dignity on the part of the proud knights. Very much incensed by the answer they had received from the Lord Chancellor, they showed the same to the Elector, who on the morning of the following day had visited the Chamberlain in his room where he was confined to his bed with his wounds.

In a voice rendered weak and pathetic by his condition, the Chamberlain asked the Elector whether, after risking his life to settle this affair according to his sovereign's wishes, he must also expose his honor to the censure of the world and to appear with a request for relenting and compromise before a man who had brought every imaginable shame and disgrace on him and his family.

The Elector, after having read the letter, asked Count Kallheim in an embarrassed way whether, without further communication with Kohlhaas, the Tribunal were not authorized to base its decision on the fact that the horses could not be restored to their original condition, and in conformity therewith to draw up the judgment just as if the horses were dead, on the sole basis of a money indemnity.

The Count answered, "Most gracious sovereign, they are dead; they are dead in the sight of the law because they have no value, and they will be so physically before they can be brought from the knacker's house to the knights' stables." To this the Elector, putting the letter in his pocket, replied that he would himself speak to the Lord Chancellor about it. He spoke soothingly to the Chamberlain, who raised himself on his elbow and seized his hand in gratitude, and, after lingering a moment to urge him to take care of his health, rose with a very gracious air and left the room.

Thus stood affairs in Dresden, when from the direction of Lützen there gathered over poor Kohlhaas another thunder-storm, even more serious, whose lightning-flash the crafty knights were clever enough to draw down upon the horse-dealer's unlucky head. It so happened that one of the band of men that Kohlhaas had collected and turned off again after the appearance of the electoral amnesty, Johannes Nagelschmidt by name, had found it expedient, some weeks later, to muster again on the Bohemian frontier a part of this rabble which was ready to take part in any infamy, and to continue on his own account the profession on the track of which Kohlhaas had put him. This good-for-nothing fellow called himself a vicegerent of Kohlhaas, partly to inspire with fear the officers of the law who were after him, and partly, by the use of familiar methods, to beguile the country people into participating in his rascalities. With a cleverness which he had learned from his master, he had it noised abroad that the amnesty had not been kept in the case of several men who had quietly returned to their homes—indeed that Kohlhaas himself had, with a faithlessness which cried aloud to heaven, been arrested on his arrival in Dresden and placed under a guard. He carried it so far that, in manifestos which were very similar to those of Kohlhaas, his incendiary band appeared as an army raised solely for the glory of God and meant to watch over the observance of the amnesty promised by the Elector. All this, as we have already said, was done by no means for the glory of God nor out of attachment for Kohlhaas, whose fate was a matter of absolute indifference to the outlaws, but in order to enable them, under cover of such dissimulation, to burn and plunder with the greater ease and impunity.

When the first news of this reached Dresden the knights could not conceal their joy over the occurrence, which lent an entirely different aspect to the whole matter. With wise and displeased allusions they recalled the mistake which had been made when, in spite of their urgent and repeated warnings, an amnesty had been granted Kohlhaas, as if those who had been in favor of it had had the deliberate intention of giving to miscreants of all kinds the signal to follow in his footsteps. Not content with crediting Nagelschmidt's pretext that he had taken up arms merely to lend support and security to his oppressed master, they even expressed the decided opinion that his whole course was nothing but an enterprise contrived by Kohlhaas in order to frighten the government, and to hasten and insure the rendering of a verdict, which, point for point, should satisfy his mad obstinacy. Indeed the Cup-bearer, Sir Hinz, went so far as to declare to some hunting-pages and courtiers who had gathered round him after dinner in the Elector's antechamber that the breaking up of the marauding band in Lützen had been but a cursed pretense. He was very merry over the Lord High Chancellor's alleged love of justice; by cleverly connecting various circumstances he proved that the band was still extant in the forests of the Electorate and was only waiting for a signal from the horse-dealer to break out anew with fire and sword.

Prince Christiern of Meissen, very much displeased at this turn in affairs, which threatened to fleck his sovereign's honor in the most painful manner, went immediately to the palace to confer with the Elector. He saw quite clearly that it would be to the interest of the knights to ruin Kohlhaas, if possible, on the ground of new crimes, and he begged the Elector to give him permission to have an immediate judicial examination of the horse-dealer. Kohlhaas, somewhat astonished at being conducted to the Government Office by a constable, appeared with his two little boys, Henry and Leopold, in his arms; for Sternbald, his servant, had arrived the day before with his five children from Mecklenburg, where they had been staying. When Kohlhaas had started to leave for the Government Office the two boys had burst into childish tears, begging him to take them along, and various considerations too intricate to unravel made him decide to pick them up and carry them with him to the hearing. Kohlhaas placed the children beside him, and the Prince, after looking benevolently at them and asking, with friendly interest, their names and ages, went on to inform Kohlhaas what liberties Nagelschmidt, his former follower, was taking in the valleys of the Ore Mountains, and handing him the latter's so-called mandates he told him to produce whatever he had to offer for his vindication. Although the horse-dealer was deeply alarmed by these shameful and traitorous papers, he nevertheless had little difficulty in explaining satisfactorily to so upright a man as the Prince the groundlessness of the accusations brought against him on this score. Besides the fact that, so far as he could observe, he did not, as the matter now stood, need any help as yet from a third person in bringing about the decision of his lawsuit, which was proceeding most favorably, some papers which he had with him and showed to the Prince made it appear highly improbable that Nagelschmidt should be inclined to render him help of that sort, for, shortly before the dispersion of the band in Lützen, he had been on the point of having the fellow hanged for a rape committed in the open country, and other rascalities. Only the appearance of the electoral amnesty had saved Nagelschmidt, as it had severed all relations between them, and on the next day they had parted as mortal enemies.