It chanced that as his visitors entered the farmhouse Kohlhaas was sitting on a bale of straw with his back to the wall and was feeding some milk and a roll of bread to his child who had fallen sick in Herzberg; and when, to open the conversation, the lady asked who he was and what was wrong with the child, what crime he had committed and where he was being taken under escort, he saluted her with his leather cap and, continuing with his task, answered her sparingly but adequately. The Elector, standing behind the hunt-equerries, noticed a small leaden locket hanging by a silken thread from his neck and asked him, for want of anything better to talk about, what it signified and what was in it. Kohlhaas, taking it off, opening it and extracting a small piece of paper sealed with glue, replied: ‘Ah yes, my lord, there is a strange story connected with this locket. It must have been seven months ago, the very day after my wife’s funeral, when as you perhaps know I was setting out from Kohlhaasenbrück to capture Junker von Tronka, who had done me great injustice; and in order to carry out some negotiations, what they were about I don’t know, the Elector of Saxony and the Elector of Brandenburg were meeting each other at the little market town of Jüterbock through which the route of my expedition took me. They had reached a satisfactory agreement by evening and were walking along the streets in friendly conversation, to watch the merrymaking at the fair which happened to be taking place in the town that day. There they came across a gypsy-woman who was sitting on a stool with an almanac telling the fortunes of people standing round her; and they asked her in jest if she didn’t also have something to reveal to them that would be pleasant for them to hear. I had just stopped with my men at an inn, and was there in the market-place where all this happened, but as I was standing in the entrance to a church behind all the crowd I couldn’t hear what the strange woman said to the gentlemen; so when the people laughingly whispered to one another that she was not one to let everyone into her secrets, and pressed forward to watch the scene that seemed about to take place, I got up on a bench behind me that was hewn out of the church entrance, not so much because I was really curious but to make more room for others who were. I had hardly reached this vantage-point, from which I had an uninterrupted view of the gentlemen and the woman, who was sitting on her stool in front of them and seemed to be scribbling something down, when she suddenly pulled herself up on her crutches, looked round at the people, and fastened her eyes on me, though I had never exchanged a word with her nor ever wanted to consult her skills; then she pushed her way across to me through the whole dense throng of onlookers and said: “There! if the gentleman wants to know, he will have to ask you about it!” And with those words, my lord, she stretched out her skinny, bony fingers and handed me this piece of paper. And when the whole crowd turned round to me and I asked her in astonishment: “What’s this fine present you’re making me, old lady?”, she answered, after mumbling a lot of stuff in which all I could make out was, to my great amazement, my own name: “… an amulet, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer; keep it safely, one day it will save your life!” And with that she vanished. Well,’ continued Kohlhaas good-humouredly, ‘I must admit that although it was a close call in Dresden, I am still alive; and what will happen to me in Berlin, and whether I shall get by with it there too, only the future will tell.’
At these words the Elector sat down on a bench, and although when Heloise asked in dismay what was the matter with him he answered: ‘Nothing, nothing at all!’, he at once collapsed in a swoon to the floor before she had time to come to his assistance and catch him in her arms. Herr von Malzahn, who was entering the room on an errand at just that moment, exclaimed: ‘God Almighty, what’s wrong with the gentleman?’ The lady called for water, the Elector’s hunting companions lifted him up and carried him to a bed in the next room, and panic reached its height when the Chamberlain, fetched by a page, declared after several vain attempts to bring him to his senses that he showed every sign of having suffered a stroke. While the Cupbearer sent a mounted messenger to Luckau to fetch a doctor, he opened his eyes and the Lord Sheriff therefore had him put in a carriage and taken at walking pace to his hunting lodge not far away; but after his arrival there the strain of the journey caused him to faint twice more, and it was not until late the next morning, when the doctor had arrived from Luckau, that he recovered a little, though with distinct symptoms of an imminent brain fever. As soon as he was conscious, he half sat up in bed and immediately asked where Kohlhaas was. The Chamberlain, who misunderstood the question, took the Elector’s hand and answered that he might set his mind at rest about that terrible man, for in accordance with instructions he himself had given after this latest strange and incomprehensible incident, he had remained behind in the farm at Dahme with his Brandenburg escort. He assured the Elector of his liveliest sympathy and emphasized that he had most severely reproached his wife for the irresponsible and frivolous action that had brought his Highness into contact with the man: but what was it in the conversation that had so strangely and deeply affected him? The Elector said he must frankly confess that the mere sight of a trivial scrap of paper which the man carried on him in a lead locket had been responsible for the whole disagreeable occurrence. By way of explanation he added a lot more which the Chamberlain found incomprehensible; then suddenly clasping the letter’s hand between his own, he declared that it was of the utmost importance to him to obtain possession of the piece of paper, and asked him to take a horse without delay and ride to Dahme, where he was to buy the paper for him from Kohlhaas at any price. The Chamberlain, who could scarcely conceal his embarrassment, assured him that if this piece of paper was of value to him, nothing in the world was more important than to conceal this fact from the horse-dealer: for if a single indiscreet word once made him aware of it, all the riches the Elector possessed would not suffice to purchase it from that ferocious ruffian, whose vindictiveness was insatiable. To reassure his master he added that they must think of some other means, and that it might be possible by subterfuge, using a third party who was quite uninvolved, to obtain the piece of paper to which he attached so much importance, as the scoundrel probably did not set much store by it for its own sake. Wiping the sweat off his brow, the Elector asked if they could immediately send someone to Dahme for this purpose and meanwhile halt the horse-dealer’s journey until they had by hook or by crook got possession of the paper. The Chamberlain, who could not believe his ears, replied that unfortunately, on any reckoning, the horse-dealer must already have left Dahme and crossed the border into Brandenburg territory, where any attempt to hamper his further transportation, let alone halt it, would lead to exceedingly disagreeable difficulties and complications, of a kind, indeed, that might be quite insuperable. When the Elector fell back on his pillow in silence with a gesture of utter despair, he asked: ‘What then is written on that piece of paper, and by what strange and inexplicable chance does your Highness know that what is written on it concerns yourself?’ But the Elector looked askance at the Chamberlain, as if he did not trust him to cooperate in this matter, and made no reply; he lay there rigid, with his heart beating uneasily, and stared at the lace of the handkerchief he was pensively holding; then suddenly, under the pretext of having some other business to discuss with him, he asked the Chamberlain to send him the Junker vom Stein, an energetic and intelligent young man whom the Elector had often employed before on secret missions.
After explaining the matter to him and impressing upon him the importance of the piece of paper in Kohlhaas’s possession, he asked if he would earn his everlasting friendship by getting this paper for him before the horse-dealer reached Berlin. When the Junker, as soon as he had to some extent grasped the situation, strange though it was, assured him that he would serve him to the utmost of his powers, the Elector instructed him to ride after Kohlhaas, and since money would probably not persuade him, speak carefully to him in private and offer him his freedom and his life – indeed immediately, if he insisted, though with all due caution, help him with horses, men and money to escape from the
Brandenburg cavalrymen who were escorting him. The Junker, after requesting a letter of authority in the Elector’s hand, at once set out with some men and, not sparing the horses’ wind, had the good fortune to overtake Kohlhaas in a village on the border where he was eating a midday meal with his five children and Herr von Malzahn in the open air in front of a house. Herr vom Stein presented himself as a stranger who was passing through and wished to take a look at the remarkable man whom Herr von Malzahn was escorting, and the latter, introducing him to Kohlhaas, at once courteously invited him to take a seat at the table. As the cavalrymen were having their lunch at a table on the other side of the house, and Malzahn had to go to and fro to arrange details about their departure, the opportunity soon arose for the Junker to make known to the horse-dealer who he was and the special mission with which he had been entrusted. The horse-dealer already knew the rank and identity of the man who had fainted in the farmhouse at Dahme at the sight of the locket in question, and the excitement into which this discovery had thrown him needed only, for its culmination, that he should read the mysterious words on the paper, which for a number of reasons he was determined not to open out of mere curiosity. And so, remembering the ignoble and unprincely treatment meted out to him in Dresden despite his own unreserved willingness to make every possible sacrifice, he replied to Junker vom Stein that he was not prepared to hand over the paper. When the Junker asked him what prompted this strange refusal, considering that he was being offered nothing less than freedom and life for it, Kohlhaas answered: ‘Noble sir! If your sovereign were to come and promise to destroy himself and the whole pack of those who help him wield the sceptre – destroy himself and them, do you understand? for that is indeed my soul’s dearest wish – even then I would not give him this piece of paper which is more valuable to him than his life. I would say to him: you can send me to the scaffold, but I can make you suffer, and I mean to do so!’ And so saying, his face deathly pale, he called over one of the cavalrymen and invited him to eat up the fair quantity of food that was still left in the dish; and for the remainder of the hour he spent in that village, with the Junker sitting at the table, he behaved to him as if he were not there, only turning to him again with a parting glance as he stepped into his carriage.
When the Elector heard this news, his condition deteriorated so gravely that for three fateful days the doctor feared for his life, which was in danger from so many simultaneous ills. Nevertheless, thanks to his naturally healthy constitution, after lying on a sick-bed for several painful weeks he recovered at least sufficiently to be put in a carriage, well tucked up with pillows and blankets, and taken back to Dresden to his affairs of state. As soon as he arrived there he summoned Prince Christiern von Meissen and asked him how far advanced were the preparations for the departure of the attorney Eibenmayer whom they had decided to send to Vienna as their representative in the Kohlhaas affair, to submit to his Imperial Majesty their complaint on the violation by Kohlhaas of the peace of the Empire. The Prince replied that in accordance with the Elector’s order upon his departure for Dahme, Eibenmayer had left for Vienna immediately upon the arrival of the jurist Zäuner, whom the Elector of Brandenburg had sent as his advocate to Dresden to present his charge against Junker Wenzel von Tronka in the matter of the black horses. The Elector, flushing and walking over to his desk, expressed surprise at this haste, since to the best of his knowledge he had made it clear that he wanted Eibenmayer’s definitive departure delayed until after a necessary consultation with Dr Luther, at whose request Kohlhaas had been granted amnesty; he would then have issued more precise and definite orders. So saying he shuffled together some correspondence and documents lying on his desk, with an air of suppressed anger. The Prince, after a pause in which he stared at him in amazement, said that he was sorry if he had incurred his displeasure in this matter; he could, however, show him the written decision of the State Council ordering him to dispatch the attorney at the abovementioned time. He added that there had been no word at the Council of any consultation with Dr Luther. At an earlier stage it might have served some purpose to take account of the views of this man of God, given his intervention on Kohlhaas’s behalf; but this was no longer so, now that the amnesty had been publicly violated and the horse-dealer arrested and handed over to the Brandenburg courts for judgement and execution. The Elector said that the mistake of sending off Eibenmayer was, he supposed, not very grave; but for the present, until he gave further orders himself, he did not want the attorney to open any proceedings against Kohlhaas in Vienna, and requested the Prince to send a dispatch-rider to him at once with instructions to that effect. The Prince replied that unfortunately this order came a day too late, since according to a report he had only just received Eibenmayer had already begun legal action and presented his complaint to the State Chancellery in Vienna. ‘How,’ asked the Elector in dismay, ‘was this possible in so short a time?’ The Prince answered that three weeks had already passed since Eibenmayer had left, and that his instructions had been that as soon as he reached Vienna he was to prosecute the affair with all possible speed; he added that any delay would, in this case, have been most improper, in view of the stubborn persistence with which the Brandenburg attorney Zäuner was pressing the charges against Junker Wenzel von Tronka – he had already applied to the court for an order that the black horses should be provisionally removed from the hands of the knacker with a view to their eventual restoration to health, and in spite of objections from the other side, the court had so ordered.
The Elector rang the bell, remarking that it did not matter and was of no consequence; then, after turning again to the Prince and questioning him on various indifferent matters, such as what else was going on in Dresden and what had happened during his absence, he motioned to him politely with his hand and dismissed him, though he was unable to conceal his innermost feelings. On the same day he asked him in writing for the whole Kohlhaas file on the pretext that he wished to work on the case personally owing to its political importance; and as he could not bear to contemplate the destruction of the one man from whom he could discover the mysterious message on the piece of paper, he wrote a letter in his own hand to the Emperor, imploring him with heartfelt urgency, for weighty reasons of which he hoped he might be able before long to give a clearer account, to grant him leave to withdraw provisionally, until a further decision could be reached, the charge brought by Eibenmayer against Kohlhaas. The Emperor, through his Chancellery of State, sent a note replying that he was extremely astonished by the apparent sudden change in the Elector’s attitude; that the report submitted to him by Saxony had made the Kohlhaas affair a matter that concerned the entire Holy Roman Empire; that accordingly he, as supreme head thereof, saw it as his duty to appear as accuser in this case before the House of Brandenburg; and that since he had already sent Court Assessor Franz Müller to Berlin to act for him as prosecutor there and call Kohlhaas to account for breach of the public peace, there was no possible way of withdrawing the charge now, and the matter would have to take its course in accordance with the law.
The Marquise of O and Other Stories Page 20