The Marquise of O and Other Stories (19 page)

It happened that the Elector of Saxony had been invited by the Lord Sheriff, Count Aloysius von Kallheim, who at that time had a considerable estate on the Saxon border, to a great stag-hunt which had been arranged at Dahme for his diversion. He had travelled there in the company of Kunz the Chamberlain and his wife Heloise, daughter of the Lord Sheriff and sister of the President, and other distinguished lords and ladies, hunt-equerries and courtiers; and so it was that the whole company, still covered with dust from the chase, were sitting at table under the shelter of tents with streaming pennants which had been pitched on a hill right across the highway. Here they were being served by pages and noblemen's sons and listening to the merry strains of music from the foot of an oak-tree, when the horse-dealer and his mounted guard came riding slowly up the road from Dresden. For one of Kohlhaas's delicate young children had fallen ill, compelling his escort Herr von Malzahn to stop for three days at Herzberg, a precaution of which he did not feel it necessary to inform the government in Dresden since he was responsible only to his own sovereign. The Elector, with his tunic half open and wearing a plumed hat decorated with pine twigs in huntsman's fashion, was sitting next to the lady Heloise, who in his early youth had been his first love; and the gaiety of the colourful feast all round him having put him in high good humour, he said: ‘Let's go and give this cup of wine to that poor fellow, whoever he is!' The lady Heloise, glancing at him affectionately, immediately rose up and, plundering the whole table, filled a silver dish handed to her by a page
with fruits, cake and bread; the whole company had already swarmed out of the tent with refreshments of all kinds when Aloysius von Kallheim came up with an embarrassed expression and asked them to stay where they were. When the surprised Elector asked what had happened to upset him so, the Sheriff turned towards the Chamberlain and falteringly answered that Kohlhaas was in the carriage. At this incomprehensible news, for it was common knowledge that the horse-dealer had left six days ago, Kunz the Chamberlain took his cup of wine and, turning back towards the tent, emptied it into the sand. Flushing very red, the Elector set his down on a plate which a page, at a sign from the Chamberlain, held out for him; and as Friedrich von Malzahn, respectfully saluting the company, whom he did not know, slowly made his way among the tent-ropes that ran across the road and moved on towards Dahme, the guests, without giving the incident further thought, went back at the Lord Sheriff's request into the tent. As soon as the Elector had sat down, Kallheim secretly sent word to the authorities at Dahme asking them to see to it that the horse-dealer's journey continued without delay; but as Herr von Malzahn insisted, in view of the late hour, on staying the night in the place, they had to content themselves with his being accommodated quietly in a farmhouse belonging to the magistracy which lay off the road, hidden in woodland. Now it happened that in the evening when the guests, merry with wine and sated with rich desserts, had forgotten the whole affair, the Sheriff proposed that they should take up their hunting stations again, as a herd of deer had been sighted, and the whole company eagerly welcomed this suggestion. Armed with muskets, they hastened in pairs over hedges and ditches into the nearby forest; and so it was that the Elector and the lady Heloise, whom he was escorting as she wanted to watch the spectacle, were to their astonishment led by the guide assigned to them right through the yard of the farmhouse where Kohlhaas and the Brandenburg cavalrymen were
lodged. When she heard this, the lady said: ‘Come, your Highness!' and playfully taking the chain of office that hung round his neck and tucking it inside his silk tunic, she added: ‘Let's slip into the farmhouse before the crowd catches us up and take a look at the extraordinary man who is spending the night there!' The Elector, flushing, caught her by the hand and said: ‘Heloise! What can you be thinking of!' But looking at him in surprise, she answered that no one would recognize him in the huntsman's costume he was wearing; and, as she tried to draw him with her, a couple of hunt-equerries, who had already satisfied their curiosity, came out of the house and assured them that, thanks to the Sheriff's precautions, neither Malzahn nor the horse-dealer knew who was in this company gathered in the neighbourhood of Dahme. So the Elector pulled his hat down over his eyes with a smile and said: ‘Folly, you rule the world, and your throne is a pretty woman's lips!‘

It chanced that as his visitors entered the farmhouse Kohlhaas was sitting on a bale of straw with his back to the wall and was feeding some milk and a roll of bread to his child who had fallen sick in Herzberg; and when, to open the conversation, the lady asked who he was and what was wrong with the child, what crime he had committed and where he was being taken under escort, he saluted her with his leather cap and, continuing with his task, answered her sparingly but adequately. The Elector, standing behind the hunt-equerries, noticed a small leaden locket hanging by a silken thread from his neck and asked him, for want of anything better to talk about, what it signified and what was in it. Kohlhaas, taking it off, opening it and extracting a small piece of paper sealed with glue, replied: ‘Ah yes, my lord, there is a strange story connected with this locket. It must have been seven months ago, the very day after my wife's funeral, when as you perhaps know I was setting out from Kohlhaasenbrück to capture Junker von Tronka, who had
done me great injustice; and in order to carry out some negotiations, what they were about I don't know, the Elector of Saxony and the Elector of Brandenburg were meeting each other at the little market town of Jüterbock through which the route of my expedition took me. They had reached a satisfactory agreement by evening and were walking along the streets in friendly conversation, to watch the merrymaking at the fair which happened to be taking place in the town that day. There they came across a gypsy-woman who was sitting on a stool with an almanac telling the fortunes of people standing round her; and they asked her in jest if she didn't also have something to reveal to them that would be pleasant for them to hear. I had just stopped with my men at an inn, and was there in the market-place where all this happened, but as I was standing in the entrance to a church behind all the crowd I couldn't hear what the strange woman said to the gentlemen; so when the people laughingly whispered to one another that she was not one to let everyone into her secrets, and pressed forward to watch the scene that seemed about to take place, I got up on a bench behind me that was hewn out of the church entrance, not so much because I was really curious but to make more room for others who were. I had hardly reached this vantage-point, from which I had an uninterrupted view of the gentlemen and the woman, who was sitting on her stool in front of them and seemed to be scribbling something down, when she suddenly pulled herself up on her crutches, looked round at the people, and fastened her eyes on me, though I had never exchanged a word with her nor ever wanted to consult her skills; then she pushed her way across to me through the whole dense throng of onlookers and said: “There! if the gentleman wants to know, he will have to ask you about it!” And with those words, my lord, she stretched out her skinny, bony fingers and handed me this piece of paper. And when the whole crowd turned round to me and I asked her in astonishment: “What's this fine
present you're making me, old lady?”, she answered, after mumbling a lot of stuff in which all I could make out was, to my great amazement, my own name: “… an amulet, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer; keep it safely, one day it will save your life!” And with that she vanished. Well,' continued Kohlhaas good-humouredly, ‘I must admit that although it was a close call in Dresden, I am still alive; and what will happen to me in Berlin, and whether I shall get by with it there too, only the future will tell.'

At these words the Elector sat down on a bench, and although when Heloise asked in dismay what was the matter with him he answered: ‘Nothing, nothing at all!', he at once collapsed in a swoon to the floor before she had time to come to his assistance and catch him in her arms. Herr von Malzahn, who was entering the room on an errand at just that moment, exclaimed: ‘God Almighty, what's wrong with the gentleman?' The lady called for water, the Elector's hunting companions lifted him up and carried him to a bed in the next room, and panic reached its height when the Chamberlain, fetched by a page, declared after several vain attempts to bring him to his senses that he showed every sign of having suffered a stroke. While the Cupbearer sent a mounted messenger to Luckau to fetch a doctor, he opened his eyes and the Lord Sheriff therefore had him put in a carriage and taken at walking pace to his hunting lodge not far away; but after his arrival there the strain of the journey caused him to faint twice more, and it was not until late the next morning, when the doctor had arrived from Luckau, that he recovered a little, though with distinct symptoms of an imminent brain fever. As soon as he was conscious, he half sat up in bed and immediately asked where Kohlhaas was. The Chamberlain, who misunderstood the question, took the Elector's hand and answered that he might set his mind at rest about that terrible man, for in accordance with instructions he himself had given after this latest strange and incomprehensible
incident, he had remained behind in the farm at Dahme with his Brandenburg escort. He assured the Elector of his liveliest sympathy and emphasized that he had most severely reproached his wife for the irresponsible and frivolous action that had brought his Highness into contact with the man: but what was it in the conversation that had so strangely and deeply affected him? The Elector said he must frankly confess that the mere sight of a trivial scrap of paper which the man carried on him in a lead locket had been responsible for the whole disagreeable occurrence. By way of explanation he added a lot more which the Chamberlain found incomprehensible; then suddenly clasping the letter's hand between his own, he declared that it was of the utmost importance to him to obtain possession of the piece of paper, and asked him to take a horse without delay and ride to Dahme, where he was to buy the paper for him from Kohlhaas at any price. The Chamberlain, who could scarcely conceal his embarrassment, assured him that if this piece of paper was of value to him, nothing in the world was more important than to conceal this fact from the horse-dealer: for if a single indiscreet word once made him aware of it, all the riches the Elector possessed would not suffice to purchase it from that ferocious ruffian, whose vindictiveness was insatiable. To reassure his master he added that they must think of some other means, and that it might be possible by subterfuge, using a third party who was quite uninvolved, to obtain the piece of paper to which he attached so much importance, as the scoundrel probably did not set much store by it for its own sake. Wiping the sweat off his brow, the Elector asked if they could immediately send someone to Dahme for this purpose and meanwhile halt the horse-dealer's journey until they had by hook or by crook got possession of the paper. The Chamberlain, who could not believe his ears, replied that unfortunately, on any reckoning, the horse-dealer must already have left Dahme and crossed the border into Brandenburg
territory, where any attempt to hamper his further transportation, let alone halt it, would lead to exceedingly disagreeable difficulties and complications, of a kind, indeed, that might be quite insuperable. When the Elector fell back on his pillow in silence with a gesture of utter despair, he asked: ‘What then is written on that piece of paper, and by what strange and inexplicable chance does your Highness know that what is written on it concerns yourself?' But the Elector looked askance at the Chamberlain, as if he did not trust him to cooperate in this matter, and made no reply; he lay there rigid, with his heart beating uneasily, and stared at the lace of the handkerchief he was pensively holding; then suddenly, under the pretext of having some other business to discuss with him, he asked the Chamberlain to send him the Junker vom Stein, an energetic and intelligent young man whom the Elector had often employed before on secret missions.

After explaining the matter to him and impressing upon him the importance of the piece of paper in Kohlhaas's possession, he asked if he would earn his everlasting friendship by getting this paper for him before the horse-dealer reached Berlin. When the Junker, as soon as he had to some extent grasped the situation, strange though it was, assured him that he would serve him to the utmost of his powers, the Elector instructed him to ride after Kohlhaas, and since money would probably not persuade him, speak carefully to him in private and offer him his freedom and his life – indeed immediately, if he insisted, though with all due caution, help him with horses, men and money to escape from the Brandenburg cavalrymen who were escorting him. The Junker, after requesting a letter of authority in the Elector's hand, at once set out with some men and, not sparing the horses' wind, had the good fortune to overtake Kohlhaas in a village on the border where he was eating a midday meal with his five children and Herr von Malzahn in the open air in front of a house. Herr vom Stein presented himself as a stranger who was passing through and wished to
take a look at the remarkable man whom Herr von Malzahn was escorting, and the latter, introducing him to Kohlhaas, at once courteously invited him to take a seat at the table. As the cavalrymen were having their lunch at a table on the other side of the house, and Malzahn had to go to and fro to arrange details about their departure, the opportunity soon arose for the Junker to make known to the horse-dealer who he was and the special mission with which he had been entrusted. The horse-dealer already knew the rank and identity of the man who had fainted in the farmhouse at Dahme at the sight of the locket in question, and the excitement into which this discovery had thrown him needed only, for its culmination, that he should read the mysterious words on the paper, which for a number of reasons he was determined not to open out of mere curiosity. And so, remembering the ignoble and unprincely treatment meted out to him in Dresden despite his own unreserved willingness to make every possible sacrifice, he replied to Junker vom Stein that he was not prepared to hand over the paper. When the Junker asked him what prompted this strange refusal, considering that he was being offered nothing less than freedom and life for it, Kohlhaas answered: ‘Noble sir! If your sovereign were to come and promise to destroy himself and the whole pack of those who help him wield the sceptre – destroy himself and them, do you understand? for that is indeed my soul's dearest wish – even then I would not give him this piece of paper which is more valuable to him than his life. I would say to him: you can send me to the scaffold, but I can make you suffer, and I mean to do so!' And so saying, his face deathly pale, he called over one of the cavalrymen and invited him to eat up the fair quantity of food that was still left in the dish; and for the remainder of the hour he spent in that village, with the Junker sitting at the table, he behaved to him as if he were not there, only turning to him again with a parting glance as he stepped into his carriage.