The Marquise of O and Other Stories (12 page)

Upon his return to Kohlhaasenbrück he embraced his
devoted wife, Lisbeth, kissed his children, who were jumping for joy round his knees, and immediately inquired about Herse, the head groom, and whether anything had been heard of him. ‘Ah, dearest Michael,' said Lisbeth, ‘poor Herse! Why, about a fortnight ago the wretch arrived here, most piteously beaten and so badly injured that he couldn't breathe properly. We put him to bed, where he kept vomiting blood, and, after repeatedly questioning him, we were told a story which none of us can understand. Apparently he was left behind by you at Tronka Castle with some horses that were not allowed free passage; he was then most shamefully ill-treated and forced to leave the castle, and it was impossible for him to bring the horses with him.' ‘I see,' said Kohlhaas, taking off his coat. ‘Has he recovered yet?' ‘More or less,' replied Lisbeth, ‘but he is still spitting up blood. I wanted to send another groom straight away to Tronka Castle to look after the horses until your return, for Herse has always been truthful and loyal to us, and indeed more so than anyone else. I had no reason to doubt his statement, for which there was so much evidence, nor to imagine that he might have lost the horses in any other manner. But he implored me not to ask anyone to show his face in that den of robbers, and told me that I should abandon the animals unless I wanted to sacrifice a man's life for them.' ‘I suppose he is still in bed?' said Kohlhaas, untying his kerchief. ‘He has been up and about on the farm for a few days now,' she replied, and added: ‘You will soon see that all this is true and that the affair is another of the crimes they have been committing lately against strangers at Tronka Castle.' ‘I shall have to investigate first,' answered Kohlhaas. ‘Call him to me, Lisbeth, if he is up!' With these words he sat down in his armchair, and his wife, very pleased at his composure, went and fetched the groom.

‘What did you do at Tronka Castle?' asked Kohlhaas, when Lisbeth brought him into the room, ‘I'm not altogether
satisfied with your conduct.' For a few moments the groom, whose pallid face flushed blotchy red at these words, remained silent. Then he answered: ‘You are right there, master! I had with me by God's providence a slow-match which would have set fire to that robbers' den they drove me out of, but I threw it into the Elbe because I heard a child crying indoors and thought to myself: let God's lightning burn it down – I'll not do it!' Moved by his words, Kohlhaas asked: ‘But what did you do to get turned out of Tronka Castle?' Herse replied: ‘It was a dirty trick, sir,' and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘But what has happened has happened. I didn't want the horses to be ruined through working in the fields, and said that they were still young and had never drawn anything.' Kohlhaas, trying to conceal his confusion, replied that this was not quite the truth since they had been harnessed up for a little at the beginning of the previous spring. ‘You were a sort of guest at the castle,' he continued, ‘and you could have obliged on one or two occasions if it was urgent to get in the harvest quickly.' ‘I did, sir,' said Herse. ‘They pulled such sullen faces that I thought it would not harm the blacks much. On the third morning I harnessed them and brought in three loads of corn.' Kohlhaas, his heart beating, cast his eyes to the ground and declared: ‘Nothing of that was mentioned to me, Herse!' Herse assured him that it was true. ‘My disobligingness,' he said, ‘consisted of refusing to yoke them up again when they had finished their midday feed. Then the warden and the steward suggested that I should accept free fodder in return and pocket the money you had left behind for their keep, so I said that I would – stick it somewhere else first, and turned on my heel and left them.' ‘But that was not reason enough for you to be turned out of Tronka Castle,' replied Kohlhaas. ‘God forbid!' exclaimed the groom, ‘that was for a real heinous crime. That evening the horses of two gentlemen visiting the castle were brought to the stable and mine were tethered
to the door. When I took the blacks from the warden, who was stabling the other horses in person, and asked where the animals should now be kept, he pointed to a pig-sty built against the castle wall with boards and planks.' ‘You mean,' interrupted Kohlhaas, ‘it was such poor accommodation for horses that it was more like a pig-sty than a stable.' ‘It
was
a pig-sty, sir,' replied Herse, ‘really and truly a pig-sty, with pigs running in and out and too low for me to stand up in.' ‘Perhaps there was nowhere else for them to be kept,' replied Kohlhaas. ‘In a way, the gentlemen's horses had priority.' ‘It was a cramped place,' answered the groom, his voice dropping. ‘All in all there were now seven gentlemen at the castle. If it had been you, you would have had the horses move up a little. I said that I wanted to go and rent a stable in the village, but the warden insisted that he had to keep an eye on the horses and that I was not to dare to take them out of the castle yard.' ‘Hm!' said Kohlhaas, ‘and what did you reply to that?' ‘Because the steward said that the two guests were only staying one night and were riding on the next morning, I led the horses into the pig-sty. But the next day went by and nothing happened, and when the third day arrived, it was said that the gentlemen would be staying for some weeks at the castle yet.' ‘But all in all it wasn't as bad in the pig-sty,' said Kohlhaas, ‘as it seemed when you first put your nose in it.' ‘Oh, to be sure,' replied the other. ‘It was all right once I'd cleaned the place out a bit. I gave the maid a groschen to put the pigs somewhere else. And during the day I managed to get the horses standing upright by lifting off the roof boards as soon as it was morning, and putting them back on in the evening. So there they stood, poking their heads through the roof like geese and looking round for Kohlhaasenbrück or some other place where they'd get decent treatment.' ‘Well then,' asked Kohlhaas, ‘why in the world did they turn you out?' ‘Sir, I'll tell you,' answered the groom. ‘It was because they wanted to get rid of me.
Because as long as I was there, they couldn't ruin the horses. Everywhere I went, in the yard or in the servants' hall, they gave me filthy looks. And because I thought to myself: you can pull your faces till you choke to death, they picked on the first opportunity to throw me out of the castle.' ‘But what was the cause?' cried Kohlhaas. ‘They must have had some cause!' ‘Oh, certainly,' answered Herse, ‘and a very just one too. During the evening of the second day I had spent in the pig-sty I took the horses, which had got themselves covered in filth in there in spite of everything, and was going to ride them down to the pond. And just as I reached the castle gate and was turning off, I heard the warden and steward rushing out of the hall behind me, with servants and dogs and sticks, and shouting: “Stop thief! stop that scoundrel!” as if they were possessed. The guard blocked my way, and when I asked him and the raging mob that was running towards me what the matter was, the warden snatched my blacks' bridles and answered: “The matter! Where are you taking these horses?” and grabbed me by the shirt. “Where am I taking them? God Almighty!” said I, “I'm riding to the horse-pond. Do you suppose I'd –?” “To the pond!” shouted the warden, “I'll make you swim back to Kohlhaasenbrück, down the highroad, you rogue!” and, as the steward tugged at one of my legs, he hauled me off my horse with a vicious murderous wrench, throwing me full-length into the mud. “Hell and damnation!” I shouted. “There are the harnesses and blankets and a bundle of my washing still back there in the stable” — but he and the grooms set on me with their boots, whips and sticks until I collapsed half-dead outside the castle gate, while the steward took away the horses. And as I was muttering: “The thieving swine! Where are they taking my horses?” and struggling to my feet, the warden yelled “Get out of the courtyard!” And then “Get him, Caesar! get him, Hunter!” came the cry. “Get him, Spitz!” And a pack of over a dozen hounds came at me. Then I
broke off a piece of fencing, a plank or something, and struck down three of the dogs dead beside me; but I'd been dreadfully mauled and was just having to fall back when a piercing whistle sounded, back went the dogs into the courtyard, the gates were slammed and bolted, and I collapsed unconscious on the road.' White in the face, but contriving to speak teasingly, Kohlhaas said: ‘So you weren't really trying to escape, Herse?' And when Herse, flushing deeply, stared down at the ground, he went on, ‘Admit it. You didn't like it in the pig-sty. You thought: it's more pleasant in the stables at Kohlhaasenbrück.' ‘God damn it!' cried Herse, ‘but I left the harnesses and blankets and a bundle of clothes in the sty! Wouldn't I have taken the three imperial florins with me that I'd hidden in a red silk kerchief behind the manger? Hell-fire and brimstone! When you speak like that, I wish I could light that match again that I threw away!' ‘Come now,' said the horse-dealer, ‘I meant nothing amiss! Look, I believe every word of what you have told me; and when the affair comes up I shall personally take the sacrament on it. I am sorry you have not fared better in my service; go, go to bed, Herse, have a bottle of wine brought to you and console yourself with the thought that you will get justice done you!' And thereupon he stood up, wrote a list of the articles his head groom had left behind in the pig-sty, entered their value, asked Herse how much he estimated his medical treatment would cost, and, after shaking his hand again, bade him leave the room.

He then recounted to Lisbeth, his wife, the whole course of the story in full explanatory detail, and declared that he was determined to seek redress in a public court of law. To his joy, he saw that she supported his intention wholeheartedly. She said that many other travellers would be passing the castle who might be less patient than he, that he would be doing God's work if he put a stop to abuses of this kind, and she would raise the sums needed to institute
legal proceedings. Kohlhaas called her a loyal wife, spent that day and the next in the pleasure of her and the children's company, and as soon as his business permitted, set out for Dresden to take his grievance to court.

With the aid of a lawyer with whom he was acquainted, he drew up a statement in which he gave a detailed description of the outrage committed against him and his groom Herse by Junker Wenzel von Tronka. He demanded punishment of the Junker in accordance with the law, the restoration of the horses to their former condition, and compensation for what both he and his groom had suffered. The evidence in the case was clear. The fact that the horses had been retained unlawfully threw a decisive light on everything else, and even if it were assumed that the horses had only chanced to fall ill, the horse-dealer's demand that they should be returned to him in a healthy state would still stand. When Kohlhaas made investigations in the capital city, he found no lack of friends who promised to give his lawsuit active support. His widespread trade in horses had made him acquainted with the country's most important men, and the honesty with which he carried it out had earned him their goodwill. He dined several times very pleasantly with his advocate, who was himself a considerable personage; he deposited a sum of money with him to cover the costs of litigation, and after some weeks returned to Lisbeth, his wife, in Kohlhaasenbrück, completely confident of the outcome of his case. Yet months passed by, and the year had almost come to a close before he even received any communication from Saxony about the action he had brought there, let alone any decision on the case. After several times renewing his petition to the court, he asked his lawyer in a confidential letter what had caused such an excessive delay. It was then that he learnt that the Dresden court, in consequence of intervention from a higher level, had dismissed his case out of hand. When the astonished horse-dealer wrote back asking for an explanation of
this, his lawyer informed him that Junker Wenzel von Tronka was related to two noblemen, Hinz and Kunz von Tronka, one of whom was Cupbearer to the sovereign and the other actually his Chamberlain. He advised him to attempt no further court proceedings, but take steps to recover possession of the horses, which were still at Tronka Castle. He gave him to understand that the Junker, who was at present in the capital, appeared to have instructed his servants to hand them over to him; and in conclusion he requested that Kohlhaas, if he were not content to let it rest there, should at least excuse him from acting further in the matter.

At this time Kohlhaas happened to be in Brandenburg, where the governor, Heinrich von Geusau, within whose jurisdiction Kohlhaasenbrück lay, was busy establishing a number of charitable institutions for the sick and poor from a very large fund which had become available to the city. He was concerned in particular with preparing for the use of invalids a mineral spring which was situated in one of the villages nearby and was credited with greater therapeutic powers than it subsequently turned out to possess. Geusau was acquainted with Kohlhaas, having done a certain amount of business with him during his period at the Electoral court, and he therefore allowed his groom Herse, who ever since that unhappy day at Tronka Castle had been suffering from pains in the chest when he breathed, to try the efficacy of this little spring, walled in and roofed over as it now was. The governor happened to be present, standing beside the bath in which Kohlhaas had laid Herse and giving some instructions, when a messenger brought the horse-dealer his Dresden lawyer's disheartening letter, which his wife had forwarded. While he was talking to the doctor, the governor noticed that Kohlhaas let fall a tear on the letter he had received and opened; whereupon he approached him in a cordial and friendly manner and asked what misfortune had befallen him. When the horse-dealer
handed him the letter without a word, this worthy man, who knew about the abominable injustice committed against him at Tronka Castle, the consequences of which had impaired Herse's health possibly for the rest of his life, clapped him on the shoulder and told him not to lose courage; he would help him, he said, to obtain justice. That evening, when the horse-dealer had come at his bidding to the castle, he told him that he need only compose a petition to the Elector of Brandenburg accompanied by a brief account of the incident and his advocate's letter, and requesting his sovereign's protection against the injustices done to him on Saxon territory. He promised to place the petition, together with another package that was ready for dispatch, in the hands of the Elector, who would, if circumstances permitted, undoubtedly make representations on his behalf to the Elector of Saxony. Such a
démarche
would be all that was needed to obtain justice for Kohlhaas in the Dresden court, despite the machinations of the Junker and his family. Kohlhaas was delighted and thanked the governor most warmly for this fresh proof of his favour, saying he was sorry he had not raised the matter in Berlin immediately without taking any action in Dresden; and when he had been to the office of the local law-court, and composed an account of his grievances fully in accordance with what was required, and had given it to the governor, he returned to Kohlhaasenbrück, more reassured about the outcome of his case than ever before. But to his dismay, only a few weeks later, he was told by a court official who had gone to Potsdam on the governor's business that the Elector had passed the petition on to his Chancellor, Count Kallheim; and that the latter, instead of taking the appropriate course of applying direct to the Dresden court for investigation and punishment of the crime, had sought more detailed preliminary information from the Junker von Tronka. The official, who, sitting in his carriage in front of Kohlhaas's house, appeared to have been given the
task of breaking this news to the horse-dealer, could not supply any satisfactory answer to his perplexed question why this procedure had been adopted. He merely added that the governor wished him to be patient, seemed anxious to continue his journey, and not until the end of their short conversation did Kohlhaas gather from a few chance words that Count Kallheim was related by marriage to the Tronka family.