The Marquise of O and Other Stories (21 page)

In the meantime, as we have already mentioned, Kohlhaas had arrived in Berlin and on the Elector of Brandenburg's special instructions was lodged in a prison for persons of rank, where with his five children he had been made as comfortable as possible. Immediately upon the arrival of
the Imperial Attorney from Vienna he had been put on trial before the High Court on the charge of breaking the peace of the Empire. Although he objected in his defence that he could not be indicted for the armed invasion of Saxony and the acts of violence which this had involved, since the Elector of Saxony had agreed at Lützen to pardon him on these counts, he was informed that His Imperial Majesty, whose representative was the prosecutor in this case, could not take that into consideration. When all this had been explained to him and he had been assured on the other hand that he would get full satisfaction in his case against Junker Wenzel von Tronka in Dresden, he soon accepted the situation without further demur. Thus it happened that on the very day of the Chamberlain's arrival, the law was pronounced upon Kohlhaas and condemned him to death by beheading; a sentence which, lenient though it was, no one believed would be carried out in view of the complications of the case – indeed the whole of Berlin, knowing how well-disposed the Elector was towards Kohlhaas, confidently hoped that he would exercise his prerogative and commute it to a mere term of imprisonment, though perhaps a long and severe one. The Chamberlain nevertheless realized that there might be no time to lose if the task assigned to him by his master was to be achieved, and set about it one morning by clearly and circumstantially showing himself, in his ordinary court dress, to Kohlhaas as the latter stood idly at his prison window watching the passers-by. From a sudden movement of the horse-dealer's head he concluded that he had noticed him, and he also noted with peculiar satisfaction that he involuntarily raised his hand to his breast as if to clasp the locket; surmising what had flashed through Kohlhaas's mind at that moment, he decided that this was sufficient preparation for the next step in his attempt to gain possession of the paper. He sent for an old woman, a rag-seller whom he had noticed hobbling about on crutches on the Berlin
streets among a crowd of other riff-raff plying the same trade, and who seemed to him similar enough in age and dress to the one described to him by the Elector; and assuming that the features of the old crone who had only briefly appeared to hand him the piece of paper would not have impressed themselves deeply on Kohlhaas's memory, he decided to use this other one in her place and if possible get her to impersonate the gypsy-woman to him. Accordingly, in order to prepare her for the part she was to play, he told her in detail of all that had occurred between the Elector and the said gypsy-woman in Jüterbock, not forgetting to stress particularly the three mysterious items on the paper, since he did not know how much the gypsy had revealed to Kohlhaas; and when he had explained to her that she must mumble out an incoherent and unintelligible speech conveying to him that some plan was afoot to get possession, by trickery or force, of this paper to which the Saxon Court attached such extreme importance, he instructed her to ask the horse-dealer, on the grounds that it was no longer safe with him, to give it back to her for safe keeping for a few crucial days. In return for a promise of substantial remuneration, part of which she required the Chamberlain to pay in advance, the old rag-seller immediately undertook to carry out this task; and as she had for some months known the mother of Herse, the groom killed at Mühlberg, and this woman was allowed by the authorities to visit Kohlhaas occasionally, she succeeded a few days later in bribing the gaoler with a small sum and gaining access to the horse-dealer.

But Kohlhaas, when he saw her enter his room and noticed a signet-ring on her hand and a coral chain hanging round her neck, thought he recognized the same old gypsy-woman who had handed him the piece of paper in Jüterbock; and indeed (for probability and reality do not always coincide) it chanced that something had happened here which we must report, though anyone who so pleases is at
liberty to doubt it: the Chamberlain had committed the most appalling of blunders, for in the old rag-seller whom he had taken from the streets of Berlin to play the part of the gypsy-woman, he had picked upon the mysterious gypsy herself whose part he wanted to have played. At any rate this woman, as she leaned on her crutches and stroked the cheeks of the children who had shrunk back against their father at her strange appearance, told Kohlhaas that she had returned from Saxony to Brandenburg quite some time ago, and having heard an incautious question dropped by the Chamberlain in the streets of Berlin about the gypsy-woman who had been in Jüterbock in the spring of the previous year, she had at once pressed forward and offered, under a false name, to do the business he wanted done. The horse-dealer noticed a strange resemblance between her and his deceased wife Lisbeth, so much so that he almost asked her if she was her grandmother; for not only did her features and her hands, which though bony were still finely shaped, and especially the way she gestured with them as she spoke, remind him most vividly of his wife, but he also saw on her neck a mole just like one that Lisbeth had had on hers. With his thoughts in a turmoil he bade the old woman be seated and asked what on earth had brought her to him on an errand from the Chamberlain. With Kohlhaas's old dog sniffing round her knees and wagging his tail as she scratched his head, the woman replied that what the Chamberlain had commissioned her to do was to tell him to which three questions of importance to the Saxon Court the piece of paper contained a mysterious answer; to warn him of an emissary who had come to Berlin in order to get possession of the paper; and to ask it back from him under the pretext that it was no longer safe round his neck where he was carrying it. But her purpose in coming was to tell him that this threat of having the paper taken from him by trickery or force was no more than a crude and preposterous deception; he need not have the least fear for its safety under the
protection of the Elector of Brandenburg in whose custody he was, indeed the piece of paper was much safer with him than with her, and he should take great care not to be parted from it by entrusting it to anyone under whatever pretext. Nevertheless, she concluded, she thought he would be wise to put it to the use for which she had given it to him at the fair in Jüterbock: namely, to heed the proposal conveyed to him by Junker vom Stein at the border, and surrender the paper to the Elector of Saxony in exchange for life and freedom. Kohlhaas, exulting in the power he thus possessed to strike a mortal wound at his enemy's heel just as it was grinding him into the dust, answered: ‘Not for all the world, old lady, not for all the world!' and, squeezing the old woman's hand, merely asked her to tell him what answers the paper contained to those three momentous questions. The woman lifted his youngest child, who had been squatting at her feet, on to her lap and said: ‘Not for all the world, horse-dealer Kohlhaas, but for this pretty fair-haired boy!' – and with that she laughed at the child, embraced and kissed him as he stared at her wide-eyed, and with her bony hands took an apple from her pocket and gave it to him. In confusion Kohlhaas said that when they were grown up the children themselves would praise his course of action, and that to keep the paper was the best thing he could do both for them and for their descendants. Besides, he asked, after the way he had been treated, who would guarantee him against being tricked again? Might he not end by having vainly sacrificed the piece of paper to the Elector, just as he had vainly sacrificed his army at Lützen? ‘When a man has once broken his word to me,' he said, ‘I will have no more dealings with him; and only at your own plain and unequivocal request, my good old woman, will I part with this piece of writing which in so miraculous a way gives me satisfaction for everything I have suffered.' Putting the child down, the woman said that in many ways he was right and that he could do whatever
he pleased. Thereupon she picked up her crutches again and made as if to leave. Kohlhaas repeated his question concerning the contents of the mysterious message, and when she briefly replied that he could after all open it, though it would be mere curiosity to do so, he added that there were a thousand other things he would like to know before she left him: who she really was, how she came by the knowledge she possessed, why she had refused to give the paper to the Elector, for whom after all she had written the words on it, and why she had handed the magic message to him of all the thousands of others, to him who had never wanted her prophecies? Now it happened that at this very moment they heard the noise of some police officers coming up the stairs; the woman therefore, suddenly alarmed by the prospect of being found by them here, answered: ‘Good-bye, Kohlhaas, good-bye! When we meet again, you will find out about all these things!' and made for the door. She called out to the children: ‘Good-bye, little ones, good-bye!' and departed after kissing all of them in turn.

In the meantime the Elector of Saxony, a prey to his dismal thoughts, had summoned two astrologers, Oldenholm and Olearius, who enjoyed a high reputation in Saxony at that time, and consulted them about the contents of the mysterious piece of paper that was of such importance to himself and to all his descendants. And since the two men, after a profound investigation lasting for several days in the tower of the palace at Dresden, could not agree whether the prophecy referred to later centuries or to the present, alluding perhaps to the kingdom of Poland with which relations were still very hostile, their learned dispute quite failed to dispel the unhappy prince's uneasiness, indeed his despair, but rather increased and intensified it until he found it quite unendurable. And now in addition the Chamberlain sent word to his wife, who was about to follow him to Berlin, to break the news diplomatically to the Elector before she left that his attempt to get possession of the
piece of paper held by Kohlhaas, with the help of an old woman who had not shown her face since, had failed, and that consequently their hopes of obtaining it were now very slender; for the sentence of death passed on the horse-dealer had now been signed by the Elector of Brandenburg, after he had meticulously scrutinized all the documents in the case, and the date of execution had already been fixed for the day following Palm Sunday. At this news the Elector of Saxony, consumed by anguish and regrets, shut himself up in his chamber like a lost soul; weary of life, he refused all food for two days, then on the third suddenly vanished from Dresden, after sending a brief message to the government that he was going to hunt with the Prince of Dessau. Where he really went and whether he travelled to Dessau we must leave in doubt, as the chronicles we have compared in order to compile this report are on this point strangely contradictory and incompatible. What is certain is that the Prince of Dessau was lying ill at this time in Brunswick at his uncle Duke Heinrich's house, quite unfit to go hunting, and that Kunz the Chamberlain's wife, the lady Heloise, arrived to stay with her husband in Berlin on the evening of the following day, accompanied by a certain Count von Königstein whom she introduced as her cousin.

Meanwhile the sentence of death was read out to Kohlhaas on the Elector of Brandenburg's orders, his chains were struck off and the documents taken from him in Dresden concerning his property and financial affairs were returned to him; and when the lawyer assigned to him by the High Court asked him how he wished to dispose of what he owned after his death, he drew up with a notary's assistance a will in favour of his children and appointed his trusty friend, the magistrate at Kohlhaasenbrück, as their guardian. His last days were accordingly spent in a peace and contentment which nothing could match; for soon after this, by special Electoral decree, the prison in which he was kept had also been opened and free access granted to all the many friends
he possessed in the city. Indeed he even had the satisfaction of seeing the theologian Jakob Freising enter his prison as an emissary of Dr Luther, bringing him a letter in the latter's own hand – without doubt a very remarkable communication, all trace of which, however, has been lost; and from this minister, in the presence of two Brandenburg deacons who assisted, he received the sacrament of holy communion. And so the fateful Monday after Palm Sunday arrived, the day on which Kohlhaas was to make atonement to the world for his rash attempt to wrest justice from the world with his own hands; the whole city was astir, for the people even now had not abandoned hope of seeing him reprieved. He was just passing out of the gate of his prison under strong escort, carrying his two little sons (for he had expressly requested this favour at the bar of the court) and with the theologian Jakob Freising conducting him, while a mournful crowd of his friends shook hands with him in farewell, when the castellan of the Electoral palace pushed his way through to him with a distraught face and gave him a note which, he said, an old woman had handed in for him. Looking in astonishment at the man, whom he hardly knew, Kohlhaas opened the note, the fastening of which was impressed with a seal that immediately reminded him of the gypsy-woman. But to his indescribable astonishment he read the following message: ‘Kohlhaas, the Elector of Saxony is in Berlin; he has gone ahead of you already to the place of execution and you may recognize him, if you care to, by a hat with blue and white plumes. I need not tell you the purpose that has brought him here: as soon as you are buried he intends to have the locket dug up and the paper inside it opened. – Your Elizabeth.' Utterly dumbfounded, Kohlhaas turned to the castellan and asked him whether he knew the strange woman who had handed him this message. But just as the castellan was answering: ‘Kohlhaas, the woman…', only to falter strangely in mid-speech, the horse-dealer was swept along in the procession which moved
off again at that very moment, and could not catch what the man, who seemed to be trembling in every limb, was saying.