The Marquise of O and Other Stories (22 page)

When he reached the place of execution, he found the Elector of Brandenburg with his retinue, including the High Chancellor Heinrich von Geusau, waiting on horseback surrounded by an immense crowd; on his right stood the Imperial Attorney, Franz Müller, with a copy of the death sentence in his hand; on his left, holding the Dresden High Court's verdict, was his own lawyer Dr Anton Zäuner; and in the middle of the semicircle which the crowd completed stood a herald with a bundle of possessions and the pair of black horses, now shining with health and pawing the ground with their hooves. For the High Chancellor von Geusau had won the case which he had brought in Dresden in his sovereign's name, and judgement had been given against Junker Wenzel von Tronka, point by point, without the least reservation; the horses, when they had been made honourable again by the waving of a flag over their heads and removed from the care of the knacker, had been fattened by the Junker's men and then handed over to the prosecuting attorney in the market square of Dresden, in the presence of a commission especially appointed to witness this fact. Accordingly, when Kohlhaas and his escort had come up the hill at the place of execution and stood before him, the Elector said: ‘Well, Kohlhaas, the day has come on which justice will be done to you! Look: I here deliver to you everything of which you were deprived by force at Tronka Castle and which I, as your sovereign, was in duty bound to recover for you: your pair of blacks, the neckcloth, the imperial florins, the bundle of washing – everything, including the money for the medical treatment of your groom Herse who died at Mühlberg. Are you satisfied with me?' Kohlhaas took the court's verdict which was passed to him at a sign from the High Chancellor, and setting down beside him the two children he had been carrying,
he read it through, his eyes wide and sparkling with triumph: then when he also found a clause condemning Junker Wenzel to two years' imprisonment, he knelt down at a distance before the Elector with his hands crossed over his breast, completely overwhelmed with emotion. Rising again and putting his hand to his bosom, he joyfully assured the High Chancellor that his dearest wish on earth had been fulfilled; then he stepped up to the horses, examined them, patted their plump necks, returned to the Chancellor and cheerfully declared that he bequeathed them to his two sons Heinrich and Leopold. The Chancellor Heinrich von Geusau looked kindly down at him from his horse, promised in the name of the Elector that his last wishes would be held sacred, and invited him to decide at his discretion on the disposal of the other items of property in the bundle. At this Kohlhaas, who had noticed Herse's aged mother in the crowd, called her over and handed her the things, saying: ‘There, my good woman, these belong to you!' He also gave her the sum that had been added as his own damages to the money in the bundle, as a gift that would comfort and provide for her in her old age.

The Elector then called out: ‘So, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer, you have thus been given satisfaction; prepare now to make satisfaction in your turn to His Imperial Majesty, whose representative stands here, for your violation of His Majesty's public peace!' Taking off his hat and throwing it to the ground, Kohlhaas said that he was prepared; after raising his children once more in his arms and embracing them, he handed them over to the magistrate from Kohlhaasenbrück and as the latter led them away from the scene with silent tears, he walked over to the block. He was just untying his neck-cloth and opening his tunic when he cast a quick glance round the circle of onlookers and caught sight, only a short distance away, of a figure he knew well: a man standing between two noblemen whose bodies half concealed him, and wearing a hat with blue and white
plumes. With a sudden movement that caught his guards unawares, Kohlhaas strode up close to him, took the locket from round his neck, took out the piece of paper, unsealed it and read it; then, fixing his gaze steadily on the man with the blue and white plumes who was already beginning to harbour sweet hopes, he stuck it in his mouth and swallowed it. At this sight the man with the blue and white plumes swooned and collapsed in convulsions. But as his companions, in consternation, stooped over him and raised him from the ground, Kohlhaas turned back to the scaffold where his head fell beneath the executioner's axe. Here the story of Kohlhaas ends. Amid general lamentation from the public his corpse was laid in a coffin, and as the bearers lifted it to take him for decent burial in the cemetery on the outskirts of the city, the Elector sent for the dead man's sons and, declaring to the High Chancellor that they were to be educated in his school for pages, dubbed them knights forth-with. Soon after this the Elector of Saxony returned to Dresden physically and mentally a broken man, and for the sequel we refer our readers to history. But in Mecklenburg some hale and hearty descendants of Kohlhaas were still living in the century before this.

Several years later, when the marquis found himself in straitened financial circumstances owing to war and a series of bad harvests, he was visited by a Florentine knight, who wished to buy the castle from him because of its fine position. The marquis, who was eager to effect this transaction, told his wife to accommodate their guest in the above-mentioned room, which was standing empty and was very beautifully and sumptuously furnished. But in the middle of the night, to the consternation of the husband and wife, the gentleman came downstairs to them pale and distraught, assuring them on his solemn word that the room was haunted: for something that had been invisible to the eye had risen to its feet in the corner with a noise as if it had been lying on straw, and had then with audible steps, slowly and feebly, crossed the room from one side to the
other and collapsed, moaning and gasping, behind the stove.

The marquis, filled with an alarm for which he himself could not account, dismissed his guest's fears with feigned laughter, and declared that to calm them he would at once get up and spend the remaining hours of darkness with him in his room, but the knight begged to be permitted to remain in the marquis's bedroom in an armchair, and when morning came he called for his carriage, took his leave, and departed.

This incident caused an extraordinary stir and, to the marquis's extreme vexation, deterred a number of purchasers; consequently, when his own servants began to repeat the strange and inexplicable rumour that a ghost was walking at midnight in that particular room, he resolved to take decisive steps to refute this report, by investigating the matter himself on the following night. Accordingly, when evening fell, he had his bed set up in the room in question and, without going to sleep, awaited midnight. But to his horror he did in fact, on the stroke of the witching hour, hear the inexplicable sounds: sounds as of someone rising from a bed of rustling straw, and crossing the room from one side to the other to collapse in moaning death-agony behind the stove. When he came down next morning the marquise asked him how his investigation had gone, whereupon he looked about him apprehensively and uncertainly, bolted the door, and assured her that the reports about the haunting were true. At this she was more terrified than ever before in her life, and begged him not to let the matter become generally known until he had once again, in cold blood, and in her presence, put it to the test. But sure enough, on the following night, both they and a loyal servant, whom they had asked to accompany them, heard the very same inexplicable, ghostly sounds; and it was only because of their urgent desire to get rid of the castle at all costs that they were able in their servant's presence to conceal the dread that seized them and to attribute the occurrence to some trivial and fortuitous cause which would no doubt come to light. When on the third evening the
couple, determined to get to the bottom of the matter, again went upstairs with beating hearts to the guest-room, it chanced that the house dog, which had been unchained, met them at the door; whereupon, without any explicit discussion of why they did so, but perhaps instinctively desiring the company of some third living creature, they took the dog with them into the room. At about eleven o'clock they each sat down on a bed, two candles burning on the table, the marquise fully dressed, the marquis with a rapier and pistols, which he had taken out of the cupboard, laid in readiness beside him; and while they sat there trying as best they could to entertain each other with conversation, the dog lay down in the middle of the room with its head on its paws and went to sleep. Presently, at exactly midnight, the terrible sounds were to be heard again: someone visible to no human eye, someone on crutches rising and standing up in the corner of the room, the rustling of the straw, the tap, tap, of the advancing steps – and at the very first of these the dog, waking and starting to its feet with ears erect, began growling and barking exactly as if some person were walking towards it, and retreated backwards in the direction of the stove. At this sight the marquise, her hair standing on end, rushed from the room; and while her husband, snatching up his sword, shouted ‘Who's there?', and on getting no answer lunged like a madman in all directions through the empty air, she called for her carriage, resolving to drive off at once to the town; but even before she had packed a few belongings together and gone clattering through the gate, she saw the whole castle burst into flames around her. The marquis, in a frenzy of horror, had seized a candle and, the house being panelled with wood throughout, had set fire to it at all four corners, weary of his life. In vain she sent in servants to rescue the unfortunate man; he had already perished miserably, and to this day his white bones, gathered together by the country people, still lie in that corner of the room in which he had ordered the beggarwoman of Locarno to rise from her bed.