bed, and after he had taken his hand, and pressed it to his heart with
a sigh, he began as follows: “Your wife, as I understand, has already
told you that the Elector of Brandenburg and I, on the third day of the
meeting, which we had in Jüterboch, met a gipsy. When the elector, who
is of sportive disposition, resolved by a jest to demolish in the sight
of the people the fame of this extraordinary woman, whose art had been
the subject of unseemly conversation at table, and asked her, on
account of the prophecy which she was about to utter, to give him a
sign that might be tested that very day, alleging that he could not
otherwise believe what she said, were she the Roman sybil herself. The
woman, taking a cursory view of us from head to foot, said that the
sign would be this: that the great roebuck, which the gardener’s son
reared in the park, would meet us in the market where we stood before
we left it. You must know that this roebuck, being intended for the
Dresden kitchen, was kept under lock and bolt, in a partition fenced
round with high laths, and shaded by the oaks of the park. As on
account of other smaller game and birds the park and the garden besides
were kept carefully closed, it was not easy to see how the animal, in
accordance with the strange prediction, would come to the place where
we stood. Nevertheless the elector, fearing some trick, and resolved
to put to shame all that the woman might say, for the sake of the jest,
sent to the castle, with orders that the roebuck should be killed at
once, and got ready for the table at an early day. He then turned back
to the woman, who had spoken about this matter aloud, and said: ‘Now,
what have you to tell me about the future?’ The woman, looking into
his hand said: ‘Hail to my lord the elector! Your grace will long
reign, the house from which thou descendest will long endure, and thy
descendants will become great and glorious, and attain power above all
the princes and lords of the world.’ The elector, after a pause,
during which he eyed the woman thoughtfully, said half aside, and
stepping up to me, that he was almost sorry he had sent a messenger to
annihilate the prophecy, and when the money, from the hands of the
knights who followed him, poured into the woman’s lap, amid loud
huzzas, he asked her, putting his hand in his pocket, and giving a
piece of gold, whether the greeting she would give to me had such a
silvery sound as his own. The woman, after she had opened a box which
stood beside her, had very deliberately put the money in it, arranging
it according to description and quantity, and had closed the lid again,
held her hand before the sun as if the light annoyed her, and looked at
me. When I repeated the question, and said jestingly to the elector,
while she examined my hand, ‘It seems that she has nothing very
pleasant to tell me,’ she seized her crutch, rose slowly from her
stool, and approaching me with hands mysteriously held out, whispered
distinctly into my ear, ‘No!’--‘So!’ said I, somewhat confused, and I
receded a step back from the figure, who with a glance as cold and
lifeless as that from eyes of marble, again seated herself on the stool
which stood behind her. ‘Pray from what side does danger threaten my
house?’ The woman taking up a bit of charcoal and a slip of paper, and
crossing her knees, asked me whether she should write it down; and when
I, with some confusion, because under the circumstances there was
nothing else left to do, answered ‘Yes, do so,’ she replied: ‘Very
good, I will write down three things--the name of the last ruler of thy
house, the year when he will lose his kingdom, and the name of him who
will take it by force of arms.’ Having finished her task in the sight
of the whole mob, she fastened together the slip with a wafer, which
she moistened with her withered mouth and pressed upon it a leaden ring
which she wore upon her middle finger. I was curious beyond
expression, as you may easily conceive, to take the slip, but she said:
‘By no means, your highness,’ adding as she turned round and raised one
of her crutches, ‘from that man yonder, who with the plumed hat is
standing behind all the people on the bench in the entrance of the
church, you may get the paper if you choose.’ And at once, while I was
standing perfectly speechless with astonishment, and had not rightly
made out what she said, she left me, and packing up the box which stood
behind her and flinging it over her back, mingled with the surrounding
crowd, so that I was unable to see her. It was a great consolation to
me at this moment that the knight, whom the elector had sent to the
castle, now returned and told him laughing, that the roebuck had been
killed and dragged into the kitchen by two hunters before his eyes.
“The elector, merrily putting his arm into mine, with the intention of
leading me from the spot, said: ‘Good! the prophecy turns out to be a
mere common-place trick, not worth the time and money which it has cost
us.’ But how great was our astonishment, when, at the very time he was
speaking these words, a cry was raised, and all eyes were turned
towards a great butcher’s dog which came running from the castle-court,
and which, having seized the roebuck in the kitchen, as good spoil, had
borne it off by the nape of the neck, and now dropped it about three
paces from us, followed by a troop of servants, male and female. Thus
was the woman’s prophecy, which she had uttered as a guarantee for all
the rest that she predicted, completely fulfilled, as the roebuck had
indeed met us in the marketplace, although it was dead. The lightning
which falls from heaven on a winter’s day, cannot strike with more
annihilating effect than that which this sight produced on me; and my
first attempt, after I had freed myself from the persons about me, was
to find out the man with the plumed hat, whom the woman had designated;
but although my people were employed for three days uninterruptedly, in
seeking information, not one of them was in a condition to give me the
slightest intelligence on the subject. Now, friend Conrad, a few weeks
ago, in the farm at Dahme, I saw the man with my own eyes.”
Having finished this narrative, the elector let the chamberlain’s hand
fall, and sank back on his couch, wiping off the perspiration. The
chamberlain, who thought every attempt to oppose or correct the
elector’s view of the case would be fruitless, entreated him to try
some plan to obtain possession of the slip, and then to leave the
fellow to his fate; but the elector replied, that he could see no plan
at all, although the thought of going without the paper, and of seeing
all knowledge of it perish with Kohlhaas, made him almost desperate.
To his friend’s question, whether he had made any efforts to discover
the gipsy herself, he answered that the government (_Gubernium_), in
pursuance of a command which he had sent forth under a false pretext,
had in vain sought for the woman to that day, in all the public places
in the electorate, while, from other reasons which he declined to
communicate more explicitly, he expressed his doubts whether she was to
be found in Saxony. It chanced that the chamberlain wished to travel
to Berlin for the sake of some considerable property in the Neumark, to
which his wife had become entitled by the bequest of the High
Chancellor Kallheim, who died soon after he was displaced; and,
therefore, as he really was much attached to the elector, he asked him,
after a short deliberation, whether he would let him act quite at
liberty in this matter.
The elector, pressing the chamberlain’s hand with warmth against his
breast, answered: “Consider that you are myself, and get the paper;”
and, therefore, the chamberlain, having entrusted his office to other
hands, hastened his journey by a day or two, and, leaving his wife
behind, set off for Berlin, accompanied only by some servants.
Kohlhaas, who, as we have already said, had in the meanwhile arrived at
Berlin, and by the special order of the elector had been put in a state
prison, made as comfortable as possible for the reception of him and
his five children, was, immediately after the appearance of the
imperial attorney from Vienna, brought before the chamber council
charged with a breach of the imperial peace. Although he said, in
answer, that he could not be prosecuted for his armed attack in Saxony,
and the violence he had there committed, by virtue of the agreement
made with the Elector of Saxony, at Lützen, he was informed that of
that agreement the emperor, whose attorney conducted this complaint,
could take no cognizance. When the matter was explained to him, and he
heard, besides, with reference to his affair at Dresden, that he would
have ample justice against Squire Wenzel von Tronka, he readily
submitted. The very day on which the chamberlain arrived, sentence was
passed against Kohlhaas, and he was condemned to be put to death with
the sword;--a sentence which, seeing how complicated was the state of
affairs, no one believed would be executed, notwithstanding its
mildness; nay, the whole city, knowing the good feeling of the elector
towards Kohlhaas, firmly hoped that the capital punishment, by a
special edict, would be commuted into a long and severe imprisonment.
The chamberlain seeing at once that no time was to be lost, if he would
fulfil his sovereign’s commission, went to work, by appearing one
morning, sedulously attired in his usual court-dress, before Kohlhaas,
who was innocently watching the passers-by from the window of his
prison. Concluding, from a sudden movement of his head, that the
horse-dealer had perceived him, and particularly observing, with great
delight, how the latter clutched, involuntarily, at the part of his
breast, where the case was situated, he judged, that what had passed in
the mind of Kohlhaas at that moment, was a sufficient preparation to
advance one step further in the attempt to gain possession of the paper.
He, therefore, called to him an old rag-woman, who was hobbling about
on crutches, and whom he had observed in the streets of Berlin among a
host of others, who were trafficking in the same commodity. This
woman, in age and attire seemed to bear a pretty close resemblance to
the one whom his elector had described, and as he thought that Kohlhaas
would have no clear recollection of the features of the gipsy, who had
only appeared for a moment when she gave him the case, he resolved to
pass off this old woman for the other one, and if possible to let her
take the part of the gipsy before Kohlhaas. To put her in a proper
position to play this part, he informed her, circumstantially, of all
that had passed between the two electors and the gipsy at Jüterboch,
not forgetting to tell her the three mysterious articles contained in
the paper, as he did not know how far the gipsy might have gone in her
explanations to Kohlhaas. After explaining to her what she must let
fall in an incoherent or unintelligible manner, for the sake of certain
plans that had been devised to obtain the paper, either by force or
stratagem--a matter of great importance to the Saxon court--he charged
her to ask Kohlhaas for it, under the pretext of keeping it for a few
eventful days, as it was no longer safe in his possession. The woman,
on the promise of a considerable reward, part of which the chamberlain,
at her request, was forced to give beforehand, at once undertook to
perform the required office; and as the mother of the man, Herse, who
had fallen at Mühlberg, sometimes visited Kohlhaas, with the permission
of the government, and this woman had been acquainted with her for some
months, she succeeded in visiting Kohlhaas at an early day, with the
help of a small present to the gaoler.
Kohlhaas, as soon as she entered, thought that by the seal-ring, which
she wore on her finger, and the coral chain which hung from her neck,
he recognised the old gipsy who had given him the can at Jüterboch.
Indeed, as probability is not always on the side of truth, so was it
here; for something happened which we certainly record, but which every
one who chooses is at liberty to doubt. The fact is, the chamberlain
had committed the most monstrous blunder, the old woman whom he had
picked up in the streets of Berlin to imitate the gipsy, being no other
than the mysterious gipsy herself whom he wished to be imitated. The
woman leaning on her crutches, and patting the cheeks of the children,
who, struck by her strange aspect, clung to their father, told him that
she had for some time left Saxony for Brandenburg, and in consequence
of a heedless question asked by the chamberlain in the streets of
Berlin, about the gipsy who was in Jüterboch in the spring of the past
year, had at once hurried to him, and under a false name had offered
herself for the office which he wished to see fulfilled.
The horse-dealer remarked a singular likeness between this woman and
his deceased wife Lisbeth: indeed he could almost have asked her if she
were not her grandmother; for not only did her features, her hands,
which, bony as they were, were still beautiful, and especially the use
which she made of these while talking, remind him of Lisbeth most
forcibly, but even a mole by which his wife’s neck was marked, was on
the gipsy’s neck also.
Hence, amid strangely conflicting thoughts, he compelled her to take a
seat, and asked her what possible business of the chamberlain’s could
bring her to him.
The woman, while Kohlhaas’s old dog went sniffing about her knees, and
wagged his tail while she patted him, announced that the commission
which the chamberlain had given her, was to tell him how the paper
contained a mysterious answer to three questions of the utmost
importance to the Saxon court, to warn him against an emissary who was
at Berlin, with the design of taking it, and to ask for the paper
herself, under the pretext that it was no more safe in his own bosom.
The real design of her coming was, however, to tell him that the threat
of depriving him of the paper, by force or cunning, was completely
idle, that he had not the least cause to feel any apprehension about
it, under the protection of the Elector of Brandenburg--nay, that the
paper was much safer with him than with her, and that he should take
great care not to lose it, by delivering it to any one under any
pretext whatever. However, she added by saying, that she thought it
prudent to use the paper for the purpose for which she had given it to
him at the Jüterboch fair, to listen to the offer which had been made
to him on the borders by the page, von Stein, and to give the paper,
which could be of no further use to him, to the Elector of Saxony, in
exchange for life and liberty.
Kohlhaas, who exulted in the power which was given him, of mortally
wounding his enemy’s heel, at the very moment when it trampled him in
the dust, replied, “Not for the world, good mother; not for the world!”
and pressing the old woman’s hand, only desired to know, what were the
answers to the important questions contained in the paper.
The woman, taking in her lap the youngest child, who was crouching down
at her feet, said, “No--not for the world, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer;
but for the sake of this pretty little fair-haired boy.” So saying,
she smiled at him, embraced him, and kissed him; while he stared at her
with all his might, and gave him with her dry hands an apple, which she
carried in her pocket.
Kohlhaas said, in some confusion, that even the children, if they were
old enough, would commend him for what he had done, and that he could
not do any thing more serviceable for them and their posterity than
keep the paper. He asked, besides, who, after the experience he had
already made, would secure him against fresh deception, and whether he
might not sacrifice the paper to the elector, just as uselessly, as he
had formerly sacrificed the troop which he collected at Lützen. “With
him who has once broken his word,” said he, “I have nothing more to do,
and nothing, good mother, but your demand, definitively and
unequivocally expressed, will cause me to part with the slip by which,
in such a remarkable manner, satisfaction is given me for all that I
have suffered.”
The woman, setting the child down upon the ground, said, that he was
right in many respects, and could do and suffer what he pleased; and,
taking her crutch again in her hand, prepared to go.
Kohlhaas repeated his question respecting the contents of the strange
paper; and when she answered him hastily, that he might open it, if
only out of curiosity, he wished to be informed about a thousand things
more before she quitted him; such as who she was; how she acquired her
science; why she had refused to give the wonderful paper to the
elector, for whom it was written, and had just selected him, who had
never cared about her science, among so many thousand persons.
At this very moment a noise was heard, made by some police officers,
who were coming up stairs, and the woman, who seemed suddenly afraid
lest she should be found by them in these apartments, answered:
“Farewell till we meet again, Kohlhaas! When we meet again, you shall
have knowledge of all this.” Turning towards the door, she cried,
“Good-bye, children, good-bye!” and kissing the little folks one after
the other, she departed.
In the meanwhile the Elector of Saxony, entirely given up to his
melancholy thoughts, had summoned two astrologers named Oldenholm and
Olearius, who then stood in high repute in Saxony, and had consulted
them as to the contents of the mysterious paper, which was of such high
import to himself and the whole race of his posterity. When these men,
after a deep inquiry, which had continued for three days in the castle
at Dresden, could not agree whether the prophecy referred to distant
ages or to the present time, while perhaps the crown of Poland, the
relations with which were so warlike, might be pointed at,--the
uneasiness, not to say the despair of the unhappy prince, far from
being lessened by the learned dispute, was rendered more acute, and
that to a degree perfectly insupportable. About the same time, the
chamberlain charged his wife, who was on the point of following him to
Berlin, to point out to the elector before her departure, how doubtful,
after the failure of the attempt he had made with the old woman, whom
he had never seen since--how doubtful was the hope of obtaining the
paper now in the possession of Kohlhaas, since the sentence of death
had already been signed by the Elector of Brandenburg after a careful
examination of the documents, and the execution was already appointed
for the Monday after Palm-Sunday.
At this intelligence, the Elector of Saxony, whose heart was rent with
grief and remorse, shut himself up in his room for two days, during
which, being weary of his life, he tasted no food. On the third day,
he suddenly disappeared from Dresden, giving a short notice to the
Gubernium that he was going to the Prince of Dessau to hunt. Where he
actually went, and whether he did turn to Dessau, we must leave
undecided, since the chronicles from the comparison of which we obtain
our information, are singularly contradictory upon this point. So much
is certain, that the Prince of Dessau, unable to hunt, lay sick at this
time, with his uncle, Duke Henry, in Brunswick, and that the Lady
Heloise on the evening of the following day, accompanied by a Count
Königstein, whom she called her cousin, entered the room of her
husband, the chamberlain.
In the meantime, the sentence of death was read to Kohlhaas at the
elector’s request, and the papers relating to his property, which had
been refused him at Dresden, were restored to him. When the
councillors, whom the tribunal had sent to him, asked him how his
property should be disposed of after his death, he prepared a will in
favour of his children, with the assistance of a notary, and appointed
his good friend the farmer at Kohlhaasenbrück their guardian. Nothing
could equal the peace and contentment of his last days, for by a
special order of the elector, the prison in which he was kept was
thrown open, and a free approach to him was granted to all his friends,
of whom many resided in the city. He had the further satisfaction of
seeing the divine, Jacob Freysing, as a delegate from Doctor Luther,
enter his dungeon, with a letter in Luther’s own hand (which was
doubtless very remarkable, but has since been lost), and of receiving
the holy sacrament from the hands of this reverend gentleman, in the
presence of two deans of Brandenburg.
At last the portentous Monday arrived, on which he was to atone to the
world for his too hasty attempt to procure justice, and still the city
was in general commotion, not being able to give up the hope that some
decree would yet come to save him. Accompanied by a strong guard, and
with his two boys in his arms--a favour he had expressly asked at the
bar of the tribunal--he was stepping from the gate of his prison, led
by Jacob Freysing, when, through the midst of a mournful throng of
acquaintance who shook hands with him and bade him farewell, the
castellan of the electoral castle pressed forward to him with a
disturbed countenance, and gave him a note which he said he had
received from an old woman. Kohlhaas, while he looked upon the man,
who was little known to him, with astonishment, opened the note, the
seal of which, impressed on a wafer, reminded him of the well-known
gipsy. Who can describe his astonishment when he read as follows:
“KOHLHAAS,--The Elector of Saxony is in Berlin. He is gone before thee
to the place of execution; and thou mayest know him, if, indeed, it
concerns thee, by a hat with blue and white feathers. I need not tell
thee the purpose for which he comes. As soon as thou art buried, he
will dig up the case, and have the paper opened which it contains.
“THY ELIZABETH.”
Kohlhaas, turning to the castellan in the greatest astonishment, asked
him if he knew the wonderful woman who had given him the note.
The castellan began to answer: “Kohlhaas, the woman----” but he stopped
short in the middle of his speech; and Kohlhaas, being carried along by
the train, which proceeded at this moment, could not hear what the man,
who seemed to tremble in every limb, was saying to him. When he came
to the place of execution, he found the Elector of Brandenburg on
horseback there, with his train, among whom was the Chancellor Heinrich
von Geusau, in the midst of an immense concourse of people. To the
right of the elector stood the imperial advocate, Franz Müller, with a
copy of the sentence in his hand, while on his left, with the decree of
the Dresden Court chamber, was his own advocate, the jurist Anton
Zäuner. In the midst of the half-open circle formed by the people, was
a herald with a bundle of things and the two horses, now sleek and in
good condition, beating the ground with their hoofs. For the
Chancellor Henry had carried every point of the suit, which, in the
name of his master, he had commenced at Dresden against Squire Wenzel
von Tronka; and consequently the horses, after they had been restored
to honour by the ceremony of waving a flag over their heads, had been
taken out of the hands of the flayer, and, having been fattened by the
squire’s men, had been handed over to the advocate in the Dresden
market, in the presence of a commission appointed for the purpose.
Therefore, the elector, when Kohlhaas, attended by the guard, ascended
the court to him, said: “Now, Kohlhaas, this is the day on which you
have justice. Here I give you back all which you were forced to lose
at the Tronkenburg, your horses, handkerchief, money, linen, and the
expenses for medical attendance on your man, Herse, who fell at
Mühlberg. Are you content with me?”
Kohlhaas, while with open, sparkling eyes, he read over the decree
which was put into his hands, at a hint from the chancellor, put down
the two children whom he carried, and when he found in it an article,
by which Squire Wenzel was condemned to be imprisoned for two years,
quite overcome by his feelings, he threw himself down before the
elector, with his hands crossed on his breast. Joyfully assuring the
chancellor, as he arose, and laid his hand on his bosom, that his
highest wish on earth was fulfilled, he went up to the horses, examined
them, and patted their fat necks, cheerfully telling the chancellor, as
he returned to him, that he made a present of them to his two sons,
Henry and Leopold.
The chancellor, Henry von Geusau, bending down to him from his horse
with a friendly aspect, promised him in the name of the elector, that
his last bequest should be held sacred, and requested him to dispose of
the other things in the bundle according to his pleasure. Upon this
Kohlhaas called out of the mob Herse’s old mother, whom he perceived in
the square, and giving her the things, said, “Here, mother, this
belongs to you,” adding, at the same time, the sum which was in the
bundle, to pay damages, as a comfort for her old days.
The elector then cried, “Now, Kohlhaas, the horse-dealer, thou to whom
satisfaction has been thus accorded, prepare to give satisfaction
thyself for the breach of the public peace.”
Kohlhaas, taking off his hat, and throwing it down, said, that he was
ready, and giving the children, after he had once more lifted them up
and pressed them to his heart, to the farmer of Kohlhaasenbrück, he
stepped up to the block, while the farmer, silently weeping, led the
children from the place. He then took the handkerchief from his neck,
and opened his doublet, when taking a cursory glance at the circle of
people, he perceived at a short distance from himself, between two
knights, who nearly concealed him, the well-known man with the blue and
white plumes. Kohlhaas, bringing himself close to him by a sudden
step, which astonished the surrounding guard, took the case from his
breast. Taking the paper out, he opened it, read it, and fixing his
eye on the man with the plume, who began to entertain hopes, put it
into his mouth and swallowed it. At this sight, the man with the blue
and white feathers fell down in convulsions. Kohlhaas, while the man’s
astonished attendants stooped down and raised him from the ground,
turned to the scaffold, where his head fell beneath the axe of the
executioner. Thus ends the history of Kohlhaas.
The corpse was put into a coffin, amid the general lamentations of the
people. While the bearers were raising it to bury it decently in the
suburban church-yard, the elector called to him the sons of the
deceased, and dubbed them knights, declaring to the chancellor, that
they should be brought up in his school of pages. The Elector of
Saxony, wounded in mind and body, soon returned to Dresden, and the
rest concerning him must be sought in his history. As for Kohlhaas,
some of his descendants, brave, joyous people, were living in
Mecklenburg in the last century.
[1] On one point the translator of this tale solicits the indulgence of
his critical readers. A great number of official names and legal terms
occur, the technical meaning of which could not properly be defined by
any one but a German jurist. As these names have no exact equivalents
in English, the names into which they are here translated may appear
arbitrary. The translator can only say that, where exactitude was
impossible, he has done his best.
[2] “Squire” is used as an equivalent for “Junker.” “Castellan” is put
for “Burgvoigt” and “Schlossvoigt.”
[3] “Gerichtsherr” means lord of the manor with right of judicature.
[4] “Amtmann” means here a farmer of crown-lands.
[5] That is a subject of another state, here Brandenburg.
THE KLAUSENBURG.
BY LUDWIG TIECK.