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

Kohlhaas, whose heart was beginning to beat uneasily amid all these complications, waited several days for the decision concerning his petition which had been laid before the person of the sovereign with such a surprising amount of formality. A week passed, however, and more than a week, without the arrival of this decision; nor had judgment been pronounced by the Tribunal, although it had been definitely promised him. Finally, on the twelfth day, Kohlhaas, firmly resolved to force the government to proclaim its intentions toward him, let them be what they would, sat down and, in an urgent request, once more asked the Government Office for the desired passports. On the evening of the following day, which had likewise passed without the expected answer, he was walking up and down, thoughtfully considering his position and especially the amnesty procured for him by Dr. Luther, when, on approaching the window of his little back room, he was astonished not to see the soldiers in the little out-building on the courtyard which he had designated as quarters for the guard assigned him by the Prince of Meissen at the time of his arrival. He called Thomas, the old porter, to him and asked what it meant. The latter answered with a sigh, "Sir, something is wrong! The soldiers, of whom there are more today than usual, distributed themselves around the whole house when it began to grow dark; two with shield and spear are standing in the street before the front door, two are at the back door in the garden, and two others are lying on a truss of straw in the vestibule and say that they are going to sleep there."

Kohlhaas grew pale and turned away, adding that it really did not matter, provided they were still there, and that when Thomas went down into the corridor he should place a light so that the soldiers could see. Then he opened the shutter of the front window under the pretext of emptying a vessel, and convinced himself of the truth of the circumstance of which the old man had informed him, for just at that moment the guard was actually being changed without a sound, a precaution which had never before entered any one's head as long as the arrangement had existed. After which, Kohlhaas, having made up his mind immediately what he would do on the morrow, went to bed, though, to be sure, he felt little desire to sleep. For nothing in the course of the government with which he was dealing displeased him more than this outward form of justice, while in reality it was violating in his case the amnesty promised him, and in case he were to be considered really a prisoner—as could no longer be doubted—he intended to wring from the government the definite and straightforward statement that such was the case.

In accordance with this plan, at earliest dawn he had Sternbald, his groom, harness his wagon and drive up to the door, intending, as he explained, to drive to Lockwitz to see the steward, an old acquaintance of his, who had met him a few days before in Dresden and had invited him and his children to visit him some time. The soldiers, who, putting their heads together, had watched the stir which these preparations were causing in the household, secretly sent off one of their number to the city and, a few minutes later, a government clerk appeared at the head of several constables and went into the house opposite, pretending to have some business there. Kohlhaas, who was occupied in dressing his boys, likewise noticed the commotion and intentionally kept the wagon waiting in front of the house longer than was really necessary. As soon as he saw that the arrangements of the police were completed, without paying any attention to them he came out before the house with his children. He said, in passing, to the group of soldiers standing in the doorway that they did not need to follow him; then he lifted the boys into the wagon and kissed and comforted the weeping little girls who, in obedience to his orders, were to remain behind with the daughter of the old porter. He had no sooner climbed up on the wagon himself than the government clerk, with the constables who accompanied him, stepped up from the opposite house and asked where he was going. To the answer of Kohlhaas that he was going to Lockwitz to see his friend, the steward, who a few days before had invited him and his two boys to visit him in the country, the clerk replied that in that case Kohlhaas must wait a few moments, as some mounted soldiers would accompany him in obedience to the order of the Prince of Meissen. From his seat on the wagon Kohlhaas asked smilingly whether he thought that his life would not be safe in the house of a friend who had offered to entertain him at his table for a day.

The official answered in a pleasant, joking way that the danger was certainly not very great, adding that the soldiers were not to incommode him in any way. Kohlhaas replied, seriously, that on his arrival in Dresden the Prince of Meissen had left it to his own choice whether he would make use of the guard or not, and as the clerk seemed surprised at this circumstance and with carefully chosen phrases reminded him that he had employed the guard during the whole time of his presence in the city, the horse-dealer related to him the incident which had led to the placing of the soldiers in his house. The clerk assured him that the orders of the Governor of the Palace, Baron Wenk, who was at that moment head of the police force, made it his duty to watch over Kohlhaas' person continually, and begged him, if he would not consent to the escort, to go to the Government Office himself so as to correct the mistake which must exist in the matter. Kohlhaas threw a significant glance at the clerk and, determined to put an end to the matter by hook or by crook, said that he would do so. With a beating heart he got down from the wagon, had the porter carry the children back into the corridor, and while his servant remained before the house with the wagon, Kohlhaas went off to the Government Office, accompanied by the clerk and his guard.

It happened that the Governor of the Palace, Baron Wenk, was busy at the moment inspecting a band of Nagelschmidt's followers who had been captured in the neighborhood of Leipzig and brought to Dresden the previous evening. The knights who were with the Governor were just questioning the fellows about a great many things which the government was anxious to learn from them, when the horse-dealer entered the room with his escort. The Baron, as soon as he caught sight of Kohlhaas, went up to him and asked him what he wanted, while the knights grew suddenly silent and interrupted the interrogation of the prisoners. When Kohlhaas had respectfully submitted to him his purpose of going to dine with the steward at Lockwitz, and expressed the wish to be allowed to leave behind the soldiers of whom he had no need, the Baron, changing color and seeming to swallow some words of a different nature, answered that Kohlhaas would do well to stay quietly at home and to postpone for the present the feast at the Lockwitz steward's. With that he turned to the clerk, thus cutting short the whole conversation, and told him that the order which he had given him with regard to this man held good, and that the latter must not leave the city unless accompanied by six mounted soldiers.

Kohlhaas asked whether he were a prisoner, and whether he should consider that the amnesty which had been solemnly promised to him before the eyes of the whole world had been broken. At which the Baron, his face turning suddenly a fiery red, wheeled around and, stepping close up to him and looking him in the eyes, answered, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Then he turned his back upon him and, leaving Kohlhaas standing there, returned to Nagelschmidt's followers.

At this Kohlhaas left the room, and although he realized that the steps he had taken had rendered much more difficult the only means of rescue that remained, namely, flight, he nevertheless was glad he had done as he had, since he was now, on his part, likewise released from obligation to observe the conditions of the amnesty. When he reached home he had the horses unharnessed, and, very sad and shaken, went to his room accompanied by the government clerk. While this man, in a way which aroused the horse-dealer's disgust, assured him that it must all be due to a misunderstanding which would shortly be cleared up, the constables, at a sign from him, bolted all the exits which led from the house into the courtyard. At the same time the clerk assured Kohlhaas that the main entrance at the front of the house still remained open and that he could use it as he pleased.

Nagelschmidt, meanwhile, had been so hard pushed on all sides by constables and soldiers in the woods of the Ore Mountains, that, entirely deprived, as he was, of the necessary means of carrying through a rôle of the kind which he had undertaken, he hit upon the idea of inducing Kohlhaas to take sides with him in reality. As a traveler passing that way had informed him fairly accurately of the status of Kohlhaas' lawsuit in Dresden, he believed that, in spite of the open enmity which existed between them, he could persuade the horse-dealer to enter into a new alliance with him. He therefore sent off one of his men to him with a letter, written in almost unreadable German, to the effect that if he would come to Altenburg and resume command of the band which had gathered there from the remnants of his former troops who had been dispersed, he, Nagelschmidt, was ready to assist him to escape from his imprisonment in Dresden by furnishing him with horses, men, and money. At the same time he promised Kohlhaas that, in the future, he would be more obedient and in general better and more orderly than he had been before; and to prove his faithfulness and devotion he pledged himself to come in person to the outskirts of Dresden in order to effect Kohlhaas' deliverance from his prison.

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!"