The family made vain efforts to discover from the Marquise the reason for her strange behaviour; she was lying in an acutely feverish condition, refused absolutely to listen to any talk of getting married, and asked them to leave her alone. When they inquired why she had suddenly changed her mind and what made the Count more repugnant to her than any other suitor, she gave her father a blank wide-eyed stare and made no answer. Her mother asked whether she had forgotten that she was herself a mother; to which she replied that in the present case she was bound to consider her own interests before those of the child, and calling on all the angels and saints as witnesses she reasserted her refusal to marry. Her father, to whom it seemed obvious that she was in a hysterical state of mind, declared that she must keep her word; he then left her, and put in hand all the arrangements for the wedding after an appropriate written exchange with the Count. He submitted to him a marriage contract by which he would renounce all conjugal rights while at the same time binding himself to fulfil any duties that might be imposed upon him. The document came back wet with tears, bearing the Count’s signature. When the Commandant handed it the next morning to the Marquise she had somewhat recovered her composure. Still sitting in her bed, she read the paper through several times, folded it up thoughtfully, opened it again and re-read it; then she declared that she would come to the Church of St Augustine at eleven o’clock. She rose, dressed without saying a word, got into the carriage with her parents and brother when the hour struck, and drove off to the appointed meeting-place.
The Count was not permitted to join the family until they reached the entrance to the church. During the ceremony the Marquise stared rigidly at the painting behind the altar and did not vouchsafe even a fleeting glance at the man with whom she was exchanging rings. When the marriage service ended, the Count offered her his arm; but as soon as they reached the church door again the Countess took her leave of him with a bow; her father inquired whether he would occasionally have the honour of seeing him in his daughter’s apartments; whereupon the Count muttered something unintelligible, raising his hat to the company, and disappeared. He moved into a residence in M— and spent several months there without ever once setting foot in the Commandant’s house, where the Countess continued to live. It was only owing to his delicate, dignified, and wholly exemplary behaviour on all occasions on which he came into any contact at all with the family, that when in due course the Countess was delivered of an infant son he was invited to the christening. The Countess, still confined and sitting in her bed under richly embroidered coverlets, saw him only for an instant when he presented himself and greeted her from a respectful distance. Among the other presents with which the guests had welcomed the newcomer, he threw on to his son’s cradle two documents; after his departure one of these turned out to be a deed of gift of 20,000 roubles to the boy, and the other a will making the boy’s mother, in the event of the Count’s death, heiress to his entire fortune. From that day on the Commandant’s wife saw to it that he was frequently invited; the house was open to him and soon not an evening passed without his paying the family a visit. His instinct told him that, in consideration of the imperfection inherent in the order of the world, he had been forgiven by all of them, and he therefore began a second wooing of the Countess, his wife; when a year had passed he won from her a second consent, and they even celebrated a second wedding, happier than the first, after which the whole family moved out to the estate at V—. A whole series of young Russians now followed the first, and during one happy hour the Count asked his wife why, on that terrible third day of the month, when she had seemed willing to receive the most vicious of debauchees, she had fled from him as if from a devil. Throwing her arms round his neck, she answered that she would not have seen a devil in him then if she had not seen an angel in him at their first meeting.
Michael Kohlhaas
(From an old chronicle)
ABOUT the middle of the sixteenth century there lived beside the banks of the River Havel a horse-dealer called Michael Kohlhaas, the son of a schoolmaster, who was one of the most honourable as well as one of the most terrible men of his age. Until his thirtieth year this extraordinary man could have been considered a paragon of civil virtues. In a village that still bears his name he owned a farm where he peacefully earned a living by his trade; his wife bore him children whom he brought up in the fear of God to be hardworking and honest; he had not one neighbour who was not indebted to his generosity or his fair-mindedness; in short, the world would have had cause to revere his memory, had he not pursued one of his virtues to excess. But his sense of justice made him a robber and a murderer.
One day he was riding out of Brandenburg with a string of young horses, all of them well nourished and with glossy coats. He was just considering how he would invest the profit he hoped to make from them at the markets – partly, as a wise businessman does, to yield fresh profit, but also partly for present enjoyment – when he reached the Elbe and, close to a magnificent castle on Saxon soil, encountered a toll-gate that he had never seen on this road before. Just as it was beginning to pour with rain he stopped his horses and called to the keeper, who soon poked a sullen face out of the window. The horse-dealer told him to open the barrier. ‘What’s happened here?’ he asked when the toll-gate keeper finally emerged from the house. ‘State privilege, conferred on Junker Wenzel von Tronka,’ said the latter, opening the lock. ‘I see,’ said Kohlhaas, ‘the Junker is called Wenzel, is he?’ and stared at the castle, whose gleaming turrets looked out across the fields. ‘So the old master is dead?’ ‘Died of an apoplexy,’ replied the keeper, as he raised the barrier. ‘Hm! A pity!’ rejoined Kohlhaas. ‘A fine old gentleman, who enjoyed people coming and going and assisted trade and traffic whenever he could. Once he had a road paved because a mare of mine broke her leg out there where the highway leads into the village. Well now! How much do I owe you?’ he asked, and laboriously fished the small change demanded by the toll-keeper out of the pocket of his coat, which was flapping in the wind. ‘Yes, old man,’ he added as the latter muttered at him to hurry, and cursed the weather, ‘it would have been better for me and for you if the tree for that pole had never been felled’; and thereupon he gave him the money and made to ride off. But hardly had he passed beneath the barrier when a fresh voice cried out from the tower behind him: ‘Stop there, horse-dealer!’ and he saw the castle warden slam a window to and come hurrying down towards him. ‘Well, what’s going on here?’ Kohlhaas asked himself as he brought the horses to a halt. The warden, still fastening a waistcoat across his capacious body, came up and, bracing himself against the wind and rain, demanded the horse-dealer’s permit. ‘My permit?’ asked Kohlhaas and added, a little disconcerted, that so far as he knew he did not possess one, but that if the warden would kindly explain what on earth such a thing was he just might possibly have one with him. The warden, looking askance at him, replied that without a state permit a dealer bringing horses could not be allowed across the border. The horse-dealer assured him that he had crossed the border seventeen times in his life without such a document; that he was accurately informed about all the state regulations affecting his trade; that there must have been a mistake, on which would they be so good as to reflect, and that since he still had a long way to go that day, he did not wish to be detained here pointlessly any longer. But the warden retorted that he would not slip through for the eighteenth time, that the regulation had only recently been made for precisely that reason, and that he must either purchase a passport on the spot or return whence he came. The horse-dealer, who was beginning to be angered by these illegal and extortionate demands, reflected for a moment, got off his horse, gave it to a stable-boy and said that he would speak to Junker von Tronka personally about the matter. With that he walked to the castle, the warden followed him muttering about niggardly cut-purses who could do with an occasional bleeding, and they entered the hall, looking each other up and down. As chance would have it, the Junker was carousing with some friends and an
anecdote had just set off a tremendous roar of laughter among them when Kohlhaas came up to make his complaint. The Junker asked him what he wanted; the knights fell silent when they saw the stranger; but hardly had Kohlhaas begun to state his request concerning the horses when the whole company exclaimed ‘Horses? Where are they?’, and rushed to the window to look at them. Seeing what magnificent specimens they were they hastened, at the Junker’s suggestion, down into the courtyard. The rain had stopped; the warden, the steward and the grooms gathered round behind them, and they all inspected the animals. One praised the sorrel with the blaze, another liked the chestnut, a third stroked the piebald with the tawny patches, and they all agreed that the horses were like stags and none finer had been reared in the entire country. Kohlhaas replied good-humouredly that the horses were no finer than the gentlemen who would ride them, and offered them for sale. The Junker, who was very attracted by the sorrel stallion, inquired what price he was asking, and the steward tried to persuade him to buy a pair of blacks, which he thought he could use on the estate as they had too few horses; but when the horse-dealer named his price the gentlemen thought it too high, and the Junker said that if that was how he rated his horses he would have to go and find King Arthur and the Round Table. Kohlhaas noticed the warden and the steward whispering together and throwing knowing glances at the blacks, and prompted by an obscure foreboding he did his utmost to get rid of the horses to them. He told the Junker: ‘My lord, I bought the blacks six months ago for twenty-five gold florins; give me thirty and they are yours.’ Two knights, standing near the Junker, said quite audibly that the horses were certainly worth that much, but the Junker declared that, while he might spend some money on the sorrel, he would not take the blacks, and began to turn away. At this, Kohlhaas said that he might be able to do a deal with him the next time he was passing through with his animals, took leave of the Junker and caught hold of his horse’s bridle as if to ride off. At that moment the warden stepped forward from the company and said he had been told that he was not allowed to travel without a permit. Kohlhaas turned round and asked the Junker whether this regulation, which would ruin his whole business, was in fact correct? Moving away, the Junker answered, with a look of embarrassment: ‘Yes, Kohlhaas, you will have to get a permit. Have a word with the warden and go on your way.’ Kohlhaas assured him that it was in no way his intention to evade any laws affecting the exportation of horses, promised that when passing through Dresden he would have the permit made out at the Chancellery and asked that, as he had known nothing at all of this requirement, he might travel on just this once. ‘Oh, well,’ said the Junker, as the wind began to get up again and whistled between his spindly legs, ‘let the poor wretch go. Come!’ he said to his friends, turned round and was about to go back into the castle. The warden, looking at the Junker, said that Kohlhaas would at least have to leave something behind as surety that he would get the permit. The Junker stopped again in the castle gateway. Kohlhaas asked how much he would have to deposit in money or in goods on account of the blacks. The steward muttered into his beard that he might just as well leave the blacks themselves. ‘Of course,’ said the warden, ‘that is the most practical solution; once he has bought the permit he can come and collect them whenever he likes.’ Taken aback by such an unconscionable demand, Kohlhaas pointed out to the Junker, who was wrapping the tails of his jerkin round his freezing body, that he wanted to sell the blacks. But at that very moment a gust of wind drove a great sheet of rain and hail through the gateway, and to put an end to the matter the Junker shouted: ‘If he refuses to leave the horses, throw him back over the toll-gate’, and went in. Seeing clearly that he would have to yield to force, the horse-dealer decided that he had no choice but to do as they demanded; he unharnessed the blacks, and led them to a stable which the warden pointed out to him. He left a groom behind with them, provided him with some money, bade him take good care of the blacks until his return, and with the remainder of the horses continued his journey to Leipzig where he intended to visit the fair; it occurred to him that perhaps, after all, such a regulation might have been issued in Saxony on account of the expansion in horse-rearing.
Once he had reached Dresden, where he owned a house and some stables on the outskirts from which he carried on his trade at the smaller markets in the principality, he went to the Chancellery where he discovered from the officials, some of whom he knew, what his original feeling had already told him: the story about the permit was a mere fabrication. At his request and none too willingly, they furnished him with a written certificate of its groundlessness and Kohlhaas smiled at the skinny Junker’s joke, though he did not quite see what the purpose of it could have been. A few weeks later, with the string of horses he had brought with him sold to his satisfaction, he returned to Tronka Castle with no more bitterness in his heart than one might feel at the general sorry state of the world. The warden, to whom he showed the certificate, made no further comment, and when the horse-dealer asked if he could now have his horses back, told him just to go down and fetch them. But no sooner had Kohlhaas crossed the courtyard than to his unpleasant surprise he heard that his groom had been beaten and thrown out only a few days after being left behind at the castle, allegedly for insolent behaviour. Kohlhaas asked the stable-boy who told him this news what his man had done and who had looked after his horses in the meantime, but the boy replied that he did not know, and coming to the stable where they were, he opened it for the horse-dealer, whose heart was already alive with misgivings. But to his utter consternation he now beheld, instead of his two glossy, well-nourished blacks, a pair of scrawny, worn-out nags, their bones protruding like pegs you could have hung things on, their manes and coats matted together from lack of care and grooming – the very epitome of misery in the animal kingdom! Kohlhaas, to whom the beasts feebly whinnied a greeting, asked in extreme indignation what had happened to his horses. The stable-boy, standing beside him, answered that nothing particular had happened to them, and that they had been given their proper feed, but that as it had been harvest-time and there had not been enough draught animals, they had been used a little in the fields. Kohlhaas cursed this shameful, premeditated outrage, but suppressed his fury which he knew would be futile, and as he had no choice, was just preparing to leave this robbers’ den with his horses when the warden, hearing high words, came over and asked what was going on. ‘What’s going on?’ retorted Kohlhaas. ‘Who gave Junker von Tronka and his men permission to take the horses I left behind here and use them for field work? Was that,’ he added, ‘a humane thing to do?’ He tried to rouse the exhausted beasts with a flick of his riding-switch and pointed out that they did not move. Staring at him haughtily for a few moments, the warden exclaimed: ‘What a churlish fellow! A lout like you ought to thank his lucky stars that the animals are still alive!’ He asked who was supposed to have looked after them when the groom had absconded, and whether it was not right that the horses should work for the fodder they had been given; and finally he said that Kohlhaas had better cause no trouble here or he would call the dogs and get peace restored in the yard that way. The horse-dealer’s heart pounded against his doublet. He felt a strong impulse to hurl this pot-bellied villain into the mud and stamp on his copper-coloured face. But his sense of justice, which was as fine as a gold-balance, still wavered; the judge within his own heart could not decide whether his opponent was guilty; and as he walked over to the horses, stifling his imprecations, and combed out their manes, he asked in a subdued voice, silently weighing up the circumstances, what offence the groom had committed to be expelled from the castle. The warden retorted: ‘The rogue behaved insubordinately in the stable-yard. He refused to accept a necessary change of stabling and demanded that the horses of two young gentlemen who were visiting Tronka Castle should stay out on the open road all night just for the sake of his nags.’ Kohlhaas would gladly have sacrificed the whole value of the horses to have had the groom at hand and to be able to compare his statement with the statement of thi
s loud-mouthed castle warden. He was still standing combing out the blacks’ matted manes, and reflecting what was to be done in his situation, when the scene was suddenly transformed and Junker Wenzel von Tronka galloped into the castle yard with a troop of knights, attendants and hounds, fresh from hare-coursing. When he asked what had happened the warden immediately spoke up, and while the dogs, sighting the stranger, uttered bloodcurdling howls from one side and the knights shouted at them to be quiet from the other, he gave the Junker a most maliciously distorted account of how the horse-dealer was making all this stir just because his blacks had been used a little. Laughing scornfully, he said that Kohlhaas refused to recognize the horses as his own. Kohlhaas exclaimed: ‘Those are not my horses, my lord; those are not the horses that were worth thirty gold florins! I want my healthy, well-nourished horses back!’ The Junker dismounted, blenching for an instant, and said: ‘If the damned fool won’t take his horses back, let him leave them here. Come, Günter! Hans! Come!’ he shouted again, as he and his friends were still in the doorway; and then he vanished into the house. Kohlhaas said that he would rather have the knacker come and take the horses to the flaying-yard than return with them to his stables at Kohlhaasenbrück in their present condition. Taking no more notice of the nags, he left them standing where they were, mounted his bay, vowed that he would see to it that justice was done him, and rode off.
The Marquise of O and Other Stories Page 12