The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV by Editor in Chief: Kuno Francke

E >> Editor in Chief: Kuno Francke >> The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV

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At these words the Elector seated himself on a bench, and although to
Lady Heloise's frightened question as to what was the matter with him,
he answered, "Nothing, nothing at all!"--yet, before she could spring
forward and catch him in her arms, he had sunk down unconscious to the
floor.

The Knight of Malzahn who entered the room at this moment on some
errand, exclaimed, "Good heavens, what is the matter with the
gentleman!" Lady Heloise cried, "Bring some water!" The hunting-pages
raised the Elector and carried him to a bed in the next room, and the
consternation reached its height when the Chamberlain, who had been
summoned by a page, declared, after repeated vain efforts to restore
him to consciousness, that he showed every sign of having been struck
by apoplexy. The Cup-bearer sent a mounted messenger to Luckau for the
doctor, and then, as the Elector opened his eyes, the High Bailiff had
him placed in a carriage and transported at a walk to his
hunting-castle near-by; this journey, however, caused two more
fainting spells after he had arrived there. Not until late the next
morning, on the arrival of the doctor from Luckau, did he recover
somewhat, though showing definite symptoms of an approaching nervous
fever. As soon as he had returned to consciousness he raised himself
on his elbow, and his very first question was, "Where is Kohlhaas?"
The Chamberlain, misunderstanding the question, said, as he took his
hand, that he might set his heart at rest on the subject of that
horrible man, as the latter, after that strange and incomprehensible
incident, had by his order remained behind in the farm-house at Dahme
with the escort from Brandenburg. Assuring the Elector of his most
lively sympathy, and protesting that he had most bitterly reproached
his wife for her inexcusable indiscretion in bringing about a meeting
between him and this man, the Chamberlain went on to ask what could
have occurred during the interview to affect his master so strangely
and profoundly.

The Elector answered that he was obliged to confess to him that the
sight of an insignificant piece of paper, which the man carried about
with him in a leaden locket, was to blame for the whole unpleasant
incident which had befallen him. To explain the circumstance, he added
a variety of other things which the Chamberlain could not understand,
then suddenly, clasping the latter's hand in his own, he assured him
that the possession of this paper was of the utmost importance to
himself and begged Sir Kunz to mount immediately, ride to Dahme, and
purchase the paper for him from the horse-dealer at any price. The
Chamberlain, who had difficulty in concealing his embarrassment,
assured him that, if this piece of paper had any value for him,
nothing in the world was more necessary than to conceal the fact from
Kohlhaas, for if the latter should receive an indiscreet intimation of
it, all the riches the Elector possessed would not be sufficient to
buy it from the hands of this vindictive fellow, whose passion for
revenge was insatiable. To calm his master he added that they must try
to find another method, and that, as the miscreant probably was not
especially attached to it for its own sake, perhaps, by using
stratagem, they might get possession of the paper, which was of so
much importance to the Elector, through the instrumentality of a third
wholly disinterested person.

The Elector, wiping away the perspiration, asked if they could not
send immediately to Dahme for this purpose and put a stop to the
horse-dealer's being transported further for the present until, by
some means or other, they had obtained possession of the paper. The
Chamberlain, who could hardly believe his senses, replied that
unhappily, according to all probable calculations, the horse-dealer
must already have left Dahme and be across the border on the soil of
Brandenburg; any attempt to interfere there with his being carried
away, or actually to put a stop to it altogether, would give rise to
difficulties of the most unpleasant and intricate kind, or even to
such as it might perchance be impossible to overcome at all. As the
Elector silently sank back on the pillow with a look of utter despair,
the Chamberlain asked him what the paper contained and by what
surprising and inexplicable chance he knew that the contents concerned
himself. At this, however, the Elector cast several ambiguous glances
at the Chamberlain, whose obligingness he distrusted on this occasion,
and gave no answer. He lay there rigid, with his heart beating
tumultuously, and looked down at the corner of the handkerchief which
he was holding in his hands as if lost in thought. Suddenly he begged
the Chamberlain to call to his room the hunting-page, Stein, an
active, clever young gentleman whom he had often employed before in
affairs of a secret nature, under the pretense that he had some other
business to negotiate with him.

After he had explained the matter to the hunting-page and impressed
upon him the importance of the paper which was in Kohlhaas'
possession, the Elector asked him whether he wished to win an eternal
right to his friendship by procuring this paper for him before the
horse-dealer reached Berlin. As soon as the page had to some extent
grasped the situation, unusual though it was, he assured his master
that he would serve him to the utmost of his ability. The Elector
therefore charged him to ride after Kohlhaas, and as it would probably
be impossible to approach him with money, Stein should, in a cleverly
conducted conversation, proffer him life and freedom in exchange for
the paper--indeed, if Kohlhaas insisted upon it, he should, though
with all possible caution, give him direct assistance in escaping from
the hands of the Brandenburg troopers who were convoying him, by
furnishing him with horses, men, and money.

The hunting-page, after procuring as a credential a paper written by
the Elector's own hand, did immediately set out with several men, and
by not sparing the horses' wind he had the good luck to overtake
Kohlhaas in a village on the border, where with his five children and
the Knight of Malzahn he was eating dinner in the open air before the
door of a house. The hunting-page introduced himself to the Knight of
Malzahn as a stranger who was passing by and wished to have a look at
the extraordinary man whom he was escorting. The Knight at once made
him acquainted with Kohlhaas and politely urged him to sit down at the
table, and since Malzahn, busied with the preparations for their
departure, was obliged to keep coming and going continually, and the
troopers were eating their dinner at a table on the other side of the
house, the hunting-page soon found an opportunity to reveal to the
horse-dealer who he was and on what a peculiar mission he had come to
him.

The horse-dealer already knew the name and rank of the man who, at
sight of the locket in question, had swooned in the farm-house at
Dahme; and to put the finishing touch to the tumult of excitement into
which this discovery had thrown him, he needed only an insight into
the secrets contained in the paper which, for many reasons, he was
determined not to open out of mere curiosity. He answered that, in
consideration of the ungenerous and unprincely treatment he had been
forced to endure in Dresden in return for his complete willingness to
make every possible sacrifice, he would keep the paper. To the
hunting-page's question as to what induced him to make such an
extraordinary refusal when he was offered in exchange nothing less
than life and liberty, Kohlhaas answered, "Noble Sir, if your
sovereign should come to me and say, 'Myself and the whole company of
those who help me wield my sceptre I will destroy--destroy, you
understand, which is, I admit, the dearest wish that my soul
cherishes,' I should nevertheless still refuse to give him the paper
which is worth more to him than life, and should say to him, 'You have
the authority to send me to the scaffold, but I can cause you pain,
and I intend to do so!'" And with these words Kohlhaas, with death
staring him in the face, called a trooper to him and told him to take
a nice bit of food which had been left in the dish. All the rest of
the hour which he spent in the place he acted as though he did not see
the young nobleman who was sitting at the table, and not until he
climbed up on the wagon did he turn around to the hunting-page again
and salute him with a parting glance.

When the Elector received this news his condition grew so much worse
that for three fateful days the doctor had grave fears for his life,
which was being attacked on so many sides at once. However, thanks to
his naturally good constitution, after several weeks spent in pain on
the sick-bed, he recovered sufficiently, at least, to permit his being
placed in a carriage well supplied with pillows and coverings, and
brought back to Dresden to take up the affairs of government once
more.

As soon as he had arrived in the city he summoned Prince Christiern
of Meissen and asked him what had been done about dispatching Judge
Eibenmaier, whom the government had thought of sending to Vienna as
its attorney in the Kohlhaas affair, in order to lay a complaint
before his Imperial Majesty concerning the violation of the public
peace proclaimed by the Emperor.

The Prince answered that the Judge, in conformity with the order the
Elector had left behind on his departure for Dahme, had set out for
Vienna immediately after the arrival of the jurist, Zaeuner, whom the
Elector of Brandenburg had sent to Dresden as his attorney in order to
institute legal proceedings against Squire Wenzel Tronka in regard to
the black horses.

The Elector flushed and walked over to his desk, expressing surprise
at this haste, since, to his certain knowledge, he had made it clear
that because of the necessity for a preliminary consultation with Dr.
Luther, who had procured the amnesty for Kohlhaas, he wished to
postpone the final departure of Eibenmaier until he should give a more
explicit and definite order. At the same time, with an expression of
restrained anger, he tossed about some letters and deeds which were
lying on his desk. The Prince, after a pause during which he stared in
surprise at his master, answered that he was sorry if he had failed to
give him satisfaction in this matter; however, he could show the
decision of the Council of State enjoining him to send off the
attorney at the time mentioned. He added that in the Council of State
nothing at all had been said of a consultation with Dr. Luther; that
earlier in the affair, it would perhaps have been expedient to pay
some regard to this reverend gentleman because of his intervention in
Kohlhaas' behalf; but that this was no longer the case, now that the
promised amnesty had been violated before the eyes of the world and
Kohlhaas had been arrested and surrendered to the Brandenburg courts
to be sentenced and executed.

The Elector replied that the error committed in dispatching
Eibenmaier was, in fact, not a very serious one; he expressed a wish,
however, that, for the present, the latter should not act in Vienna in
his official capacity as plaintiff for Saxony, but should await
further orders, and begged the Prince to send off to him immediately
by a courier the instructions necessary to this end.

The Prince answered that, unfortunately, this order came just one day
too late, as Eibenmaier, according to a report which had just arrived
that day, had already acted in his capacity as plaintiff and had
proceeded with the presentation of the complaint at the State Chancery
in Vienna. In answer to the Elector's dismayed question as to how all
this was possible in so short a time, he added that three weeks had
passed since the departure of this man and that the instructions he
had received had charged him to settle the business with all possible
dispatch immediately after his arrival in Vienna. A delay, the Prince
added, would have been all the more inadvisable in this case, as the
Brandenburg attorney, Zaeuner, was proceeding against Squire Wenzel
Tronka with the most stubborn persistence and had already petitioned
the court for the provisional removal of the black horses from the
hands of the knacker with a view to their future restoration to good
condition, and, in spite of all the arguments of the opposite side,
had carried his point.

The Elector, ringing the bell, said, "No matter; it is of no
importance," and turning around again toward the Prince asked
indifferently how other things were going in Dresden and what had
occurred during his absence. Then, incapable of hiding his inner state
of mind, he saluted him with a wave of the hand and dismissed him.

That very same day the Elector sent him a written demand for all the
official documents concerning Kohlhaas, under the pretext that, on
account of the political importance of the affair, he wished to go
over it himself. As he could not bear to think of destroying the man
from whom alone he could receive information concerning the secrets
contained in the paper, he composed an autograph letter to the
Emperor; in this he affectionately and urgently requested that, for
weighty reasons, which possibly he would explain to him in greater
detail after a little while, he be allowed to withdraw for a time,
until a further decision had been reached, the complaint which
Eibenmaier had entered against Kohlhaas.

The Emperor, in a note drawn up by the State Chancery, replied that
the change which seemed suddenly to have taken place in the Elector's
mind astonished him exceedingly; that the report which had been
furnished him on the part of Saxony had made the Kohlhaas affair a
matter which concerned the entire Holy Roman Empire; that, in
consequence, he, the Emperor, as head of the same, had felt it his
duty to appear before the house of Brandenburg in this, as plaintiff
in this affair, and that, therefore; since the Emperor's counsel,
Franz Mueller, had gone to Berlin in the capacity of attorney in order
to call Kohlhaas to account for the violation of the public peace, the
complaint could in no wise be withdrawn now and the affair must take
its course in conformity with the law.

This letter completely crushed the Elector and, to his utter dismay,
private communications from Berlin reached him a short time after,
announcing the institution of the lawsuit before the Supreme Court at
Berlin and containing the remark that Kohlhaas, in spite of all the
efforts of the lawyer assigned him, would in all probability end on
the scaffold. The unhappy sovereign determined, therefore, to make one
more effort, and in an autograph letter begged the Elector of
Brandenburg to spare Kohlhaas' life. He alleged as pretext that the
amnesty solemnly promised to this man did not lawfully permit the
execution of a death sentence upon him; he assured the Elector that,
in spite of the apparent severity with which Kohlhaas had been treated
in Saxony, it had never been his intention to allow the latter to die,
and described how wretched he should be if the protection which they
had pretended to be willing to afford the man from Berlin should, by
an unexpected turn of affairs, prove in the end to be more detrimental
to him than if he had remained in Dresden and his affair had been
decided according to the laws of Saxony.

The Elector of Brandenburg, to whom much of this declaration seemed
ambiguous and obscure, answered that the energy with which the
attorney of his Majesty the Emperor was proceeding made it absolutely
out of the question for him to conform to the wish expressed by the
Elector of Saxony and depart from the strict precepts of the law. He
remarked that the solicitude thus displayed really went too far,
inasmuch as the complaint against Kohlhaas on account of the crimes
which had been pardoned in the amnesty had, as a matter of fact, not
been entered at the Supreme Court at Berlin by him, the sovereign who
had granted the amnesty, but by the supreme head of the Empire who was
in no wise bound thereby. At the same time he represented to him how
necessary it was to make a fearful example of Kohlhaas in view of the
continued outrages of Nagelschmidt, who with unheard-of boldness was
already extending his depredations as far as Brandenburg, and begged
him, in case he refused to be influenced by these considerations, to
apply to His Majesty the Emperor himself, since, if a decree was to be
issued in favor of Kohlhaas, this could only be rendered after a
declaration on his Majesty's part.

The Elector fell ill again with grief and vexation over all these
unsuccessful attempts, and one morning, when the Chamberlain came to
pay him a visit, he showed him the letters which he had written to the
courts of Vienna and Berlin in the effort to prolong Kohlhaas' life
and thus at least gain time in which to get possession of the paper in
the latter's hands. The Chamberlain threw himself on his knees before
him and begged him by all that he held sacred and dear to tell him
what this paper contained. The Elector bade him bolt the doors of the
room and sit down on the bed beside him, and after he had grasped his
hand and, with a sigh, pressed it to his heart, he began as follows
"Your wife, as I hear, has already told you that the Elector of
Brandenburg and I, on the third day of the conference that we held at
Jueterbock, came upon a gipsy, and the Elector, lively as he is by
nature, determined to destroy by a jest in the presence of all the
people the fame of this fantastic woman, whose art had,
inappropriately enough, just been the topic of conversation at dinner.
He walked up to her table with his arms crossed and demanded from her
a sign--one that could be put to the test that very day--to prove the
truth of the fortune she was about to tell him, pretending that, even
if she were the Roman Sibyl herself, he could not believe her words
without it. The woman, hastily taking our measure from head to foot,
said that the sign would be that, even before we should leave, the big
horned roebuck which the gardener's son was raising in the park, would
come to meet us in the market-place where we were standing at that
moment. Now you must know that this roebuck, which was destined for
the Dresden kitchen, was kept behind lock and key in an inclosure
fenced in with high boards and shaded by the oak-trees of the park;
and since, moreover, on account of other smaller game and birds, the
park in general and also the garden leading to it, were kept carefully
locked, it was absolutely impossible to understand how the animal
could carry out this strange prediction and come to meet us in the
square where we were standing. Nevertheless the Elector, afraid that
some trick might be behind it and determined for the sake of the joke
to give the lie once and for all to everything else that she might
say, sent to the castle, after a short consultation with me, and
ordered that the roebuck be instantly killed and prepared for the
table within the next few days. Then he turned back to the woman
before whom this matter had been transacted aloud, and said, 'Well, go
ahead! What have you to disclose to me of the future?' The woman,
looking at his hand, said, 'Hail, my Elector and Sovereign! Your Grace
will reign for a long time, the house from which you spring will long
endure, and your descendants will be great and glorious and will come
to exceed in power all the other princes and sovereigns of the world.'

"The Elector, after a pause in which he looked thoughtfully at the
woman, said in an undertone, as he took a step toward me, that he was
almost sorry now that he had sent off a messenger to ruin the
prophecy; and while amid loud rejoicing the money rained down in heaps
into the woman's lap from the hands of the knights who followed the
Elector, the latter, after feeling in his pocket and adding a gold
piece on his own account, asked if the salutation which she was about
to about to reveal to me also had such a silvery sound as his. The
woman opened a box that stood beside her and in a leisurely, precise
way arranged the money in it according to kind and quantity; then she
closed it again, shaded her eyes with her hand as if the sun annoyed
her, and looked at me. I repeated the question I had asked her and,
while she examined my hand, I added jokingly to the Elector, 'To me,
so it seems, she has nothing really agreeable to announce!' At that
she seized her crutches, raised herself slowly with their aid from her
stool, and, pressing close to me with her hands held before her
mysteriously, she whispered audibly in my ear, 'No!' 'Is that so?' I
asked confused, and drew back a step before the figure, who with a
look cold and lifeless as though from eyes of marble, seated herself
once more on the stool behind her; 'from what quarter does danger
menace my house?' The woman, taking a piece of charcoal and a paper in
her hand and crossing her knees, asked whether she should write it
down for me; and as I, really embarrassed, though only because under
the existing circumstances there was nothing else for me to do,
answered, 'Yes, do so,' she replied, 'Very well! Three things I will
write down for you--the name of the last ruler of your house, the year
in which he will lose his throne, and the name of the man who through
the power of arms will seize it for himself.' Having done this before
the eyes of all the people she arose, sealed the paper with a wafer,
which she moistened in her withered mouth, and pressed upon it a
leaden seal ring which she wore on her middle finger. And as I,
curious beyond all words, as you can well imagine, was about to seize
the paper, she said, 'Not so, Your Highness!' and turned and raised
one of her crutches; 'from that man there, the one with the plumed
hat, standing on the bench at the entrance of the church behind all
the people--from him you shall redeem it, if it so please you!' And
with these words, before I had clearly grasped what she was saying,
she left me standing in the square, speechless with astonishment, and,
clapping shut the box that stood behind her and slinging it over her
back, she disappeared in the crowd of people surrounding us, so that I
could no longer watch what she was doing. But at this moment, to my
great consolation, I must admit, there appeared the knight whom the
Elector had sent to the castle, and reported, with a smile hovering on
his lips, that the roebuck had been killed and dragged off to the
kitchen by two hunters before his very eyes. The Elector, gaily
placing his arm in mine with the intention of leading me away from the
square, said, 'Well then, the prophecy was a commonplace swindle and
not worth the time and money which it has cost us!' But how great was
our astonishment when, even before he had finished speaking, a cry
went up around the whole square, and the eyes of all turned toward a
large butcher's dog trotting along from the castle yard. In the
kitchen he had seized the roebuck by the neck as a fair prize, and,
pursued by men-servants and maids, dropped the animal on the ground
three paces in front of us. Thus indeed the woman's prophecy, which
was the pledge for the truth of all that she had uttered, was
fulfilled, and the roebuck, although dead to be sure, had come to the
market-place to meet us. The lightning which falls from heaven on a
winter's day cannot annihilate more completely than this sight did me,
and my first endeavor, as soon as I had excused myself from the
company which surrounded me, was to discover immediately the
whereabouts of the man with the plumed hat whom the woman had pointed
out to me; but none of my people, though sent out on a three days'
continuous search, could give me even the remotest kind of information
concerning him. And then, friend Kunz, a few weeks ago in the
farm-house at Dahme, I saw the man with my own eyes!"

With these words he let go of the Chamberlain's hand and, wiping away
the perspiration, sank back again on the couch. The Chamberlain, who
considered it a waste of effort to attempt to contradict the Elector's
opinion of the incident or to try to make him adopt his own view of
the matter, begged him by all means to try to get possession of the
paper and afterward to leave the fellow to his fate. But the Elector
answered that he saw absolutely no way of doing so, although the
thought of having to do without it or perhaps even seeing all
knowledge of it perish with this man, brought him to the verge of
misery and despair. When asked by his friend whether he had made any
attempts to discover the person of the gipsy-woman herself, the
Elector replied that the Government Office, in consequence of an order
which he had issued under a false pretext, had been searching in vain
for this woman throughout the Electorate; in view of these facts, for
reasons, however, which he refused to explain in detail, he doubted
whether she could ever be discovered in Saxony.

Now it happened that the Chamberlain wished to go to Berlin on account
of several considerable pieces of property in the Neumark of
Brandenburg which his wife had fallen heir to from the estate of the
Arch-Chancellor, Count Kallheim, who had died shortly after being
deposed. As Sir Kunz really loved the Elector, he asked, after
reflecting for a short time, whether the latter would leave the matter
to his discretion; and when his master, pressing his hand
affectionately to his breast, answered, "Imagine that you are myself,
and secure the paper for me!" the Chamberlain turned over his affairs
to a subordinate, hastened his departure by several days, left his
wife behind, and set out for Berlin, accompanied only by a few
servants.

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