they all burst out into a ceaseless fit of laughter at some jest, when
Kohlhaas approached to state his grievance. The squire asked him what
he wanted, while the knights, eyeing the stranger, remained still; yet
hardly had he begun his request concerning the horses, than the whole
company cried out--“Horses! where are they?” and ran to the window to
see them. No sooner had they set eyes on the sleek lot than, on the
motion of the squire, down they flew into the court-yard. The rain had
ceased; castellan, bailiff and servants, were collected around, and all
surveyed the animals. One praised the sorrel with the white spot on
his forehead, another liked the chesnut, a third patted the dappled one
with tawney spots, and agreed that the horses were like so many stags,
and that none better could be reared in the country. Kohlhaas, in high
spirits, replied that the horses were no better than the knights who
should ride them, and asked them to make a purchase. The squire, who
was greatly taken with the strong sorrel stallion, asked the price,
while the bailiff pressed him to buy a pair of blacks which he thought
might be usefully employed on the estate; but when the horse-dealer
named his terms, the knights found them too high, and the squire said
that he might ride to the round table and find King Arthur if he fixed
such prices as these. Kohlhaas, who saw the castellan and the bailiff
whisper together, as they cast most significant glances on the blacks,
left nothing undone, actuated as he was by some dark foreboding, to
make them take the horses.
“See sir,” he said to the squire, “I bought the blacks for
five-and-twenty gold crowns, six months ago. Give me thirty and they
are yours.”
Two of the knights, who stood near the squire, said plainly enough that
the horses were well worth the money; but the squire thought that he
might buy the sorrel, while he objected to take the blacks, and made
preparations to depart, when Kohlhaas, saying that they would conclude
a bargain the next time he went that way with his horses, bade farewell
to the squire, and took his horse’s bridle to ride off. At this moment
the castellan stepped forward from the rest, and said that he had told
him he could not travel without a passport. Kohlhaas, turning round,
asked the squire whether this really was the case, adding that it would
prove the utter destruction of his business. The squire, somewhat
confused, answered as he withdrew,
“Yes, Kohlhaas, you must have a pass; speak about it with the
castellan, and go your way.” Kohlhaas assured him that he had no
notion of evading such regulations as might be made respecting the
conveyance of horses, promised, in his way through Dresden, to get a
pass from the secretary’s office, and begged that he might, on this
occasion, be allowed to go on, as he knew nothing of the requisition.
“Well,” said the squire, while the storm broke out anew and rattled
against his thin limbs, “Let the fellow go. Come,” said he to his
knights, and moving round, he was proceeding to the castle. The
castellan, however, turning to him said that Kohlhaas must at least
leave some pledge that he would get the passport. The squire, upon
this, remained standing at the castle-gate, while Kohlhaas asked what
security in money or in kind he should leave on account of the black
horses. The bailiff mumbled out that he thought the horses themselves
might as well be left. “Certainly,” said the castellan, “That is the
best plan. When he has got the pass he can take them away at any time.”
Kohlhaas, astounded at so impudent a proposition, told the squire, who
was shivering and holding his waistcoat tight to his body, that he
should like to sell him the blacks; but the latter, as a gust of wind
drove a world of rain through the gate, cried out, to cut the matter
short, “If he won’t leave his horses pitch him over the bar back
again!” and so saying, left the spot. The horse-dealer, who saw that
he must give way to force, resolved, as he could not do otherwise, to
comply with the request, so he unfastened the blacks, and conducted
them to a stable which the castellan showed him, left a servant behind,
gave him money, told him to take care of the blacks till his return,
and doubting whether, on account of the advances made in breeding,
there might not be such a law in Saxony, he continued his journey with
the rest of his horses to Leipzig, where he wished to attend the fair.
As soon as he reached Dresden, where, in one of the suburbs he had a
house with stables, being in the habit of carrying on his trade from
thence with the lesser markets of the country, he went to the
secretary’s office, and there learned from the councillors, some of
whom he knew, what he had expected at first--namely, that the story
about the passport was a mere fable. The displeased councillors
having, at the request of Kohlhaas, given him a certificate as to the
nullity of the requisition, he laughed at the thin squire’s jest,
though he did not exactly see the purport of it; and, having in a few
weeks sold his horses to his satisfaction, he returned to the
Tronkenburg without any bitter feeling beyond that at the general
troubles of the world. The castellan, to whom he showed the
certificate, gave no sort of explanation, but merely said, in answer to
the question of the horse-dealer, whether he might have the horses back
again, that he might go and fetch them. Already, as he crossed the
court-yard, Kohlhaas heard the unpleasant news that his servant, on
account of improper conduct, as they said, had been beaten and sent off
a few days after he had been left at the Tronkenburg. He asked the
young man who gave him this intelligence, what the servant had done,
and who had attended the horses in the meanwhile. He replied that he
did not know, and opened the stall in which they were kept to the
horse-dealer, whose heart already swelled with dark misgivings. How
great was his astonishment when, instead of his sleek, well-fed blacks,
he saw a couple of skinny, jaded creatures, with bones on which things
might have been hung, as on hooks, and manes entangled from want of
care; in a word, a true picture of animal misery. Kohlhaas, to whom
the horses neighed with a slight movement, was indignant in the highest
degree, and asked what had befallen the creatures? The servant
answered, that no particular misfortune had befallen them, but that, as
there had been a want of draught-cattle, they had been used a little in
the fields. Kohlhaas cursed this shameful and preconcerted act of
arbitrary power; but, feeling his own weakness, suppressed his rage,
and, as there was nothing else to be done, prepared to leave the
robber’s nest with his horses, when the castellan, attracted by the
conversation, made his appearance, and asked what was the matter.
“Matter!” said Kohlhaas, “who allowed Squire Von Tronka and his people
to work in the fields the horses that I left?” He asked if this was
humanity, tried to rouse the exhausted beasts by a stroke with a
switch, and showed him that they could not move. The castellan, after
he had looked at him for awhile, insolently enough said, “Now, there’s
an ill-mannered clown! Why does not the fellow thank his God that his
beasts are still living?” He asked whose business it was to take care
of them when the boy had run away, and whether it was not fair that the
horses should earn in the fields the food that was given them, and
concluded by telling him to cease jabbering, or he would call out the
dogs, and get some quiet that way at any rate.
The horse-dealer’s heart beat strongly against his waistcoat, he felt
strongly inclined to fling the good-for-nothing mass of fat into the
mud, and set his foot on his brazen countenance. Yet his feeling of
right, which was accurate as a gold balance, still wavered; before the
tribunal of his own heart, he was still uncertain whether his adversary
was in the wrong; and, while pocketing the affronts, he went to his
horses and smoothed down their manes. Silently weighing the
circumstances, he asked, in a subdued voice, on what account the
servant had been sent away from the castle. The castellan answered
that it was because the rascal had been impudent. He had resisted a
necessary change of stables, and had desired that the horses of two
young noblemen, who had come to Tronkenburg, should remain out all
night in the high road. Kohlhaas would have given the value of the
horses to have had the servant by him, and to have compared his
statement with that of the thick-lipped castellan. He stood awhile and
smoothed the tangles out of the manes, bethinking himself what was to
be done in his situation, when suddenly the scene changed, and the
Squire Von Tronka, with a host of knights, servants, and dogs,
returning from a hare-hunt galloped into the castle-court. The
castellan, when the squire asked what had happened, took care to speak
first; and, while the dogs at the sight of the stranger were barking at
him on one side, with the utmost fury, and the knights on the other
side were trying to silence them, he set forth, distorting the matter
as much as possible, the disturbance that the horse-dealer had created,
because his horses had been used a little. Laughing scornfully, he
added that he had refused to acknowledge them as his own. “They are
not my horses, your worship!” cried Kohlhaas; “these are not the horses
that were worth thirty golden crowns! I will have my sound and
well-fed horses.” The squire, whose face became pale for a moment,
alighted and said, “If the rascal will not take his horses, why let him
leave them. Come Gunther, come Hans,” cried he, as he brushed the dust
from his breeches with his hand. “And, ho! wine there!” he called, as
he crossed the threshold with the knights and entered his dwelling.
Kohlhaas said that he would rather send for the knacker and have the
horses knocked on the head, than he would take them in such a condition
to his stable at Kohlhaasenbrück. He left them standing where they
were, without troubling himself further about them, and vowing that he
would have justice, flung himself on his brown horse, and rode off.
He was just setting off full speed for Dresden, when, at the thought of
the servant, and at the complaint that had been made against him at the
castle, he began to walk slowly, turned his horse’s head before he had
gone a thousand paces, and took the road to Kohlhaasenbrück, that, in
accordance with his notions of prudence and justice, he might first
hear the servant’s account of the matter. For a correct feeling, well
inured to the defective ways of the world, inclined him, in spite of
the affronts he had received, to pass over the loss of his horses, as
an equitable result; if, indeed, as the castellan had maintained, it
could be proved that his servant was in the wrong. On the other hand,
a feeling equally honourable, which gained ground as he rode further,
and heard, wherever he stopped, of the wrongs that travellers had to
endure every day at the Tronkenburg, told him, that if the whole affair
was a concerted scheme--as, indeed, it seemed to be--it was his duty to
use every effort to obtain satisfaction for the affronts he had
endured, and to secure his fellow-citizens for the future.
As soon as, on his arrival at Kohlhaasenbrück, he had embraced his good
wife Lisbeth, and kissed his children, who sported about his knees, he
inquired after his head servant, Herse, and whether any thing had been
heard of him.
“Yes, dearest Michael,” said Lisbeth, “and only think--that unfortunate
Herse came here about a fortnight ago, beaten most barbarously--aye, so
beaten, that he could scarcely breathe. We took him to bed, when he
spat a good deal of blood, and, in answer to our repeated questions,
told a story which none of us could understand;--how he was left behind
by you at the Tronkenburg with the horses, which were not allowed to
pass, how he was forced, by the most shameful ill-usage, to leave the
castle, and how he was unable to bring the horses with him.”
“Indeed!” said Kohlhaas, putting off his mantle, “is he recovered now?”
“Tolerably,” she answered, “with the exception of the spitting of
blood. I wished immediately to send a servant to the Tronkenburg, to
take care of the horses till you went there, for Herse has always been
so honest, indeed so much more faithful to us than any one else, that I
never thought of doubting a statement supported by so many evident
signs of truth, or of believing that he had lost the horses in any
other way. Yet he entreated me not to counsel any one to show himself
in that robber’s nest, and to give up the horses, if I would not
sacrifice a human being.”
“Is he still in bed?” asked Kohlhaas, loosening his neckcloth.
“For the last few days he has gone about in the court,” she
answered--“in short, you will see that all is true enough, and that
this affair is one of the atrocities which the people at the
Tronkenburg have lately perpetrated against strangers.”
“That I must look into,” said Kohlhaas. “Call him here, Lisbeth, if he
is up.” With these words he sat himself down, while the housewife, who
was pleased to see him so forbearing, went and fetched the servant.
“What have you been doing at the Tronkenburg?” asked Kohlhaas, as
Lisbeth entered the room with him. “I am not well pleased with you.”
The servant, in whose pale face a spot of red appeared at these words,
was silent for a while, and then said--
“You are right, master, for I flung into the Elbe a match, which, by
God’s providence, I had with me, to set on fire the robber’s nest, from
which I was driven, as I heard a child crying within, and thought to
myself--‘God’s lightning may consume it, but I will not.’”
“But what did you do to be sent away from the Tronkenburg?” said
Kohlhaas, much struck.
“It was on account of a bad piece of business,” said Herse, wiping the
perspiration from his forehead; “but no matter, ‘what can’t be cured
must be endured.’ I would not allow the horses to be ruined by field
work, and told them they were still young, and had never been used for
drawing.”
Kohlhaas, endeavouring to conceal the perturbation of his mind,
observed, that Herse had not quite told the truth in this instance, as
the horses had been in harness a little during the preceding spring.
“As you were a kind of guest at the castle, you might have obliged them
once or twice, when they were forced to get in their harvest as quickly
as they could.”
“So I did, master,” replied Herse, “I thought, as they began to make
wry faces, that it would not cost us the horses, at all events. On the
third morning I put them too, and brought in three loads of corn.”
Kohlhaas, whose heart swelled, fixed his eyes on the ground, and said,
“They told me nothing of that, Herse.”
The man, however, assured him that it was so. “My incivility,” he
said, “consisted in this: that I would not allow the horses to be yoked
again, when they had scarcely taken their feed at noon, and that when
the castellan and the bailiff told me to take fodder gratis, and to
pocket the money which had been given me, I gave them a short answer,
turned on my heel, and walked off.”
“But,” said Kohlhaas, “it was not for this incivility that you were
sent away from the Tronkenburg.”
“God forbid!” said the man, “it was on account of a rascally piece of
injustice. For in the evening, the horses of two knights, who had come
to the Tronkenburg, were put in the stable, and mine were tied to the
stable-door. And when I took the horses out of the hand of the
castellan, and asked him where they were to be kept, he showed me a
pigsty, built with boards and laths against the castle wall.”
“You mean,” interrupted Kohlhaas, “that it was such a bad place for
horses, that it was more like a pigsty than a stable.”
“I mean a pigsty, master,” said Herse, “really and truly a pigsty,
where the pigs ran in and out, and in which I could not stand upright.”
“Perhaps there was no other place for the horses,” observed Kohlhaas,
“and those of the knights had, in some measure, the preference.”
“The place,” answered the servant, dropping his voice, “was indeed
narrow. Seven knights in all were stopping at the castle; but if it
had been you--you would have put the horses a little closer together.
I said that I would try to hire a stable in the village, but the
castellan objected that he must have the horses under his own eye, and
that I must not venture to move them from the yard.”
“Hem!” said Kohlhaas, “what did you do then?”
“Why, as the bailiff told me that the two guests would only stop over
the night, and would leave the next morning, I led the horses into the
sty. But the next day passed, and nothing of the kind took place; and
when the third came, I heard the visitors would remain at the castle
for some weeks.”
“Then, in the end,” said Kohlhaas, “it was not so bad in the pigsty, as
it seemed, when first you looked into it.”
“True,” replied Herse, “when I had swept the place a bit, it was
passable. Then I gave the girl a groschen to put the pigs somewhere
else, and during the day, at least, I managed to let the horses stand
upright, for I took off the boards at the top, when the morning dawned,
and put them on again in the evening. They peeped out of the roof like
so many geese, and looked after Kohlhaasenbrück, or some place at any
rate, where they would be better off.”
“But now,” said Kohlhaas, “why in the world did they send you away?”
“Because, master,” replied the man, “they wanted to get rid of me;
because, as long as I was there, they could not ruin the horses. In
the yard, and in the servants’ room, they always made queer faces at
me, and because I thought ‘you may twist your mouths out of joint, if
you like,’ they managed to find a pretext, and turned me out of the
yard.”
“But the reason,” said Kohlhaas, “they must have had some reason.”
“Oh, certainly,” replied Herse, “and a very good one too. On the
evening of the second day which I had passed in the sty, I took the
horses, which had become dirty, and was going to ride them out to
water. When I was just at the gate, and was about to turn, I heard the
castellan and the bailiff, with servants, dogs, and sticks, rush upon
me from the servants’ room, and shout out ‘Stop the thief, stop the
hangdog!’ as if they were all possessed. The gate-keeper intercepted
my passage, and when I asked him and the uproarious mob what was the
matter, the castellan, seizing the bridle of the two horses, cried,
‘Matter, indeed! Where are you going with the horses?’ and so saying,
seized me by the collar. Why, where should I be going?’ said I, ‘I am
going to water the horses.’ ‘Oh, to water!’ cried the castellan, ‘I’ll
water you! I’ll teach you to swim on the high road all the way to
Kohlhaasenbrück.’ Upon this, he and the bailiff, who had laid hold of
my leg, flung me treacherously from the horse, so that I lay full
length in the mud. ‘Murder!’ shouted I, ‘There are the harness, and
the horse-cloths, and a bundle of linen belonging to me in the stable.’
But the castellan and the servants, while the bailiff led off the
horses, belaboured me with whips, and cudgels, and kicks, till I fell
down, half dead, at the gate. And when I said, ‘Where are the thievish
rogues taking the horses?’ and got up, ‘Out of the castle-yard!’ cried
the castellan. ‘Ho, there, Cæsar!--Ho, Touzer!--Ho, Pincher!’ and
straight more than a dozen dogs flew at me. At this I broke a stick or
something from the fence, and lay three of the dogs dead at my feet;
but when, tortured by their fangs, I was forced to give way, ‘Phew!’
went a pipe--the dogs were in the yard--bang went the gate--the bolt
was drawn, and down in the road I fell, quite exhausted.”
Kohlhaas, though his face was white, affected a jocose style, and said,
“Now, did not you wish to abscond, Herse?” and when the man, colouring,
looked on the ground, he added, “Now confess, you did not like the
pigsty, you thought the stable in Kohlhaasenbrück much better--did you
not?” “Thunder of Heaven!” exclaimed Herse, “I left the harness and
horse-cloths, and the bundle of linen in the sty. Should I not have
secured the three crowns which I left in the red silk neckerchief, hid
behind the manger? Death and the devil!--When you talk so, you make me
wish to light that match again which I threw away;” “Nay, nay,” said
Kohlhaas, “I did not mean so ill with you, I believe every word you
have spoken, and if there is any talk about it, I will take the
sacrament upon it; I am only sorry that you fared no better in my
service. Go to bed, Herse; go to bed. Take a flask of wine and
comfort yourself--you shall have justice.” He then rose, asked for a
list of the things which the man had left in the sty, specified their
value; asked him the expenses of curing his hurt, and, after shaking
hands with him, let him go.
He then told his wife, Lisbeth, the whole particulars of the affair;
said that he was resolved to claim public justice, and was pleased to
see that in this design she fully agreed with him. For she said that
many other travellers, probably less forbearing than he, would go by
that castle, that it would be a pious work to stop disorders like
these, and that she would soon collect enough for the expenses of the
suit. Kohlhaas called her a dear woman, passed this and the following
day with her and his children, and, as soon as business allowed, went
to Dresden to make his complaint before the tribunal.
Then with the help of a lawyer of his acquaintance he drew up a
petition, in which, after a circumstantial statement of the wrong which
the Squire Wenzel von Tronka had done both to him, and his servant
Herse, he claimed that he should be punished according to law, that his
horses should be restored to their former condition, and that
compensation should be awarded for the wrong which he and his servant
had suffered. The case was clear enough, the fact that the horses had
been illegally detained threw a light on all the rest, and even if it
were assumed that they had been injured merely by chance, the claim of
their owner to have them back in a healthy condition, was nevertheless
just. Besides Kohlhaas had plenty of good friends at Dresden, who
promised heartily to support his cause, his extensive trade in horses
had gained him a numerous acquaintance, and the honesty of his dealings
had acquired him the good will of the most important men in the
country. He frequently dined with his advocate, who was himself a man
of consequence, gave him a sum to defray the law expenses, and being
fully satisfied by him as to the issue of the suit, returned, after a
few weeks to his wife at Kohlhaasenbrück. However months passed on,
and the year was nearly at an end, and he had not yet got from Saxony
even a statement concerning his suit, much less the decision itself.
After he had applied to the tribunal several times anew he asked his
legal assistant in a confidential letter, what could be the cause of
this monstrous delay, and learned that his suit had been entirely set
aside in consequence of a high application to the supreme court at
Dresden. In answer to another letter from the horse-dealer, couched in
terms of high dissatisfaction, and asking a reason for all this, the
jurist replied, that the Squire Wenzel von Tronka was related to two
young gentlemen, Herrn Henry and Conrad von Tronka, one of whom was
attached to the lord cup-bearer, while the other was chamberlain. He
advised him, without proceeding further in the suit, to try to get his
horses back from the Tronkenburg, gave him to understand that the
squire, who was now in the capital, had ordered his people to return
them, and finally entreated him, if he would not be satisfied, at
any-rate not to give him (the writer) any further commissions relative
to the matter.