The Marquise of O and Other Stories (20 page)

When the Elector heard this news, his condition deteriorated
so gravely that for three fateful days the doctor feared for his life, which was in danger from so many simultaneous ills. Nevertheless, thanks to his naturally healthy constitution, after lying on a sick-bed for several painful weeks he recovered at least sufficiently to be put in a carriage, well tucked up with pillows and blankets, and taken back to Dresden to his affairs of state. As soon as he arrived there he summoned Prince Christiern von Meissen and asked him how far advanced were the preparations for the departure of the attorney Eibenmayer whom they had decided to send to Vienna as their representative in the Kohlhaas affair, to submit to his Imperial Majesty their complaint on the violation by Kohlhaas of the peace of the Empire. The Prince replied that in accordance with the Elector's order upon his departure for Dahme, Eibenmayer had left for Vienna immediately upon the arrival of the jurist Zäuner, whom the Elector of Brandenburg had sent as his advocate to Dresden to present his charge against Junker Wenzel von Tronka in the matter of the black horses. The Elector, flushing and walking over to his desk, expressed surprise at this haste, since to the best of his knowledge he had made it clear that he wanted Eibenmayer's definitive departure delayed until after a necessary consultation with Dr Luther, at whose request Kohlhaas had been granted amnesty; he would then have issued more precise and definite orders. So saying he shuffled together some correspondence and documents lying on his desk, with an air of suppressed anger. The Prince, after a pause in which he stared at him in amazement, said that he was sorry if he had incurred his displeasure in this matter; he could, however, show him the written decision of the State Council ordering him to dispatch the attorney at the abovementioned time. He added that there had been no word at the Council of any consultation with Dr Luther. At an earlier stage it might have served some purpose to take account of the views of this man of God, given his intervention on Kohlhaas's behalf; but this was no longer so,
now that the amnesty had been publicly violated and the horse-dealer arrested and handed over to the Brandenburg courts for judgement and execution. The Elector said that the mistake of sending off Eibenmayer was, he supposed, not very grave; but for the present, until he gave further orders himself, he did not want the attorney to open any proceedings against Kohlhaas in Vienna, and requested the Prince to send a dispatch-rider to him at once with instructions to that effect. The Prince replied that unfortunately this order came a day too late, since according to a report he had only just received Eibenmayer had already begun legal action and presented his complaint to the State Chancellery in Vienna. ‘How,' asked the Elector in dismay, ‘was this possible in so short a time?' The Prince answered that three weeks had already passed since Eibenmayer had left, and that his instructions had been that as soon as he reached Vienna he was to prosecute the affair with all possible speed; he added that any delay would, in this case, have been most improper, in view of the stubborn persistence with which the Brandenburg attorney Zäuner was pressing the charges against Junker Wenzel von Tronka – he had already applied to the court for an order that the black horses should be provisionally removed from the hands of the knacker with a view to their eventual restoration to health, and in spite of objections from the other side, the court had so ordered.

The Elector rang the bell, remarking that it did not matter and was of no consequence; then, after turning again to the Prince and questioning him on various indifferent matters, such as what else was going on in Dresden and what had happened during his absence, he motioned to him politely with his hand and dismissed him, though he was unable to conceal his innermost feelings. On the same day he asked him in writing for the whole Kohlhaas file on the pretext that he wished to work on the case personally owing to its political importance; and as he could not bear to contemplate
the destruction of the one man from whom he could discover the mysterious message on the piece of paper, he wrote a letter in his own hand to the Emperor, imploring him with heartfelt urgency, for weighty reasons of which he hoped he might be able before long to give a clearer account, to grant him leave to withdraw provisionally, until a further decision could be reached, the charge brought by Eibenmayer against Kohlhaas. The Emperor, through his Chancellery of State, sent a note replying that he was extremely astonished by the apparent sudden change in the Elector's attitude; that the report submitted to him by Saxony had made the Kohlhaas affair a matter that concerned the entire Holy Roman Empire; that accordingly he, as supreme head thereof, saw it as his duty to appear as accuser in this case before the House of Brandenburg; and that since he had already sent Court Assessor Franz Müller to Berlin to act for him as prosecutor there and call Kohlhaas to account for breach of the public peace, there was no possible way of withdrawing the charge now, and the matter would have to take its course in accordance with the law.

This letter profoundly upset the Elector; and when, to his utmost distress, private reports presently began to reach him from Berlin indicating that the trial in the High Court had begun and forecasting that despite all the efforts of the advocate appointed for his defence Kohlhaas would probably end on the scaffold, the unhappy prince decided to make one more attempt, and wrote a personal letter to the Elector of Brandenburg begging him to spare the horse-dealer's life. He resorted to the argument that the amnesty which the man had been guaranteed made it improper to carry out a death sentence upon him; he assured the Elector that despite the apparent severity with which they had proceeded against Kohlhaas in Saxony it had never been his own intention to have him executed; and he described how inconsolable he personally would be if the protection which Berlin had claimed to be extending to the man turned out
unexpectedly, in the event, to be to his greater disadvantage than if he had stayed in Dresden and his case had been decided according to Saxon law. The Elector of Brandenburg, to whom much in this account of the matter seemed ambiguous and obscure, answered that the zeal with which his Imperial Majesty's attorney was conducting the prosecution meant that any deviation from the absolute rigour of the law, such as the Elector of Saxony desired, was wholly out of the question. He remarked that the concern expressed to him by the Elector of Saxony was excessive, because although Kohlhaas stood arraigned in the Berlin High Court for crimes which the amnesty had pardoned, his accuser was not the Elector of Saxony, who had proclaimed that amnesty, but the supreme ruler of the Empire, who was not in any way bound by it. He also pointed out how necessary it was to make a deterrent example of Kohlhaas in view of the continuing outrages by Nagelschmidt, who with unprecedented audacity had already carried them into the territory of Brandenburg; and he requested the Elector of Saxony, if all these considerations carried no weight with him, to appeal to his Imperial Majesty himself, for if Kohlhaas was to be pardoned, this could only be done on the Emperor's initiative.

Grief and vexation at all these fruitless attempts plunged the Elector into a fresh illness; and when the Chamberlain visited him one morning, he showed him the letters he had sent to Vienna and to Berlin in his efforts to prolong Kohlhaas's life and so at least gain time in which to try to take possession of the piece of paper he carried. The Chamberlain fell to his knees before him and implored him by all that was sacred and dear to him to tell him what was written on the paper. The Elector asked him to bolt the door and to sit on his bed; then taking his hand and pressing it to his bosom with a sigh, he began the following narrative: ‘I understand that your wife has already told you how the Elector of Brandenburg and I encountered a gypsy-woman
on the third day of our meeting at Jüterbock. The Elector, being a man of lively disposition, decided to play a joke on this weird creature in public and so destroy her reputation for soothsaying, which had just been made the subject of some unseemly conversation at dinner; accordingly he went and stood with folded arms by the table where she was sitting, and demanded that if she was going to tell his fortune she should first give him a sign that could be verified on that same day, for otherwise, he said, he would not be able to believe what she told him even if she were the Roman Sibyl herself. After looking us quickly up and down the woman said that this would be the sign: the big horned roebuck which the gardener's boy was rearing in the park would come to meet us in this market-place before we had left it. Now you must understand that this roebuck, being intended for the Dresden court kitchens, was kept under lock and key in an enclosure, shaded by the oak-trees in the park and surrounded by a high wooden fence; furthermore, because it contained other smaller game and poultry, the whole park as well as the garden leading to it were kept carefully closed, and it was therefore quite impossible to imagine how this animal could come to us in the square where we were standing and thus fulfil the bizarre prophecy. Nevertheless, suspecting that some trick might be involved, the Elector briefly consulted me and, determined to carry out his jest and discredit once and for all anything she might subsequently say, he sent a message to the palace ordering that the roebuck should be slaughtered at once and prepared for the table on one of the following days. He then turned back to the woman, in front of whom all this had been said aloud, and asked: “Well now! What can you reveal about my future?” The woman, looking into his hand, replied: “Hail, my lord Elector! Your Highness will rule for many years, the house of your ancestors will flourish for many generations, and your descendants will become great and glorious and will achieve power above
all the princes and lords of the world!” After a pause in which he looked pensively at the woman, the Elector stepped back to me and said in an undertone that he now almost regretted having sent off the messenger who would confute the prophecy; and while the noblemen in his retinue, with much rejoicing, showered money into the woman's lap, he asked her, giving her a gold coin from his own pocket as well, whether her greeting to me would have an equally sterling sound. After opening a box that stood by her and slowly and fussily sorting the money into it by denomination and quantity, the woman closed it again, held her hand up as if to shield her eyes from the sun, and looked at me. When I repeated the question and said jestingly to the Elector, as she examined my hand: “She does not seem to have anything pleasant to tell
me
!” she picked up her crutches, slowly pulled herself up with them from her stool, and with her hands held out mysteriously in front of her came up close to me and whispered plainly in my ear: “No!” – “Indeed!” I exclaimed in confusion, recoiling from her as she sank back on her stool with a cold lifeless stare as if her eyes were those of a figure of marble. “And from what quarter does danger threaten my house?” Taking some paper and charcoal and crossing her knees, the woman asked if I wanted her to write it down for me. And when I, being indeed in some embarrassment because the circumstances left me no choice, answered, “Yes, do that!” she said, “Very well! I shall write down three things for you: the name of the last ruler of your dynasty, the year in which he will lose his throne, and the name of the man who will seize it by force of arms.” And having done so, in front of all the people, she rose to her feet, sealed the paper with some glue which she moistened between her withered lips, and pressed it with a lead signet-ring which she wore on her middle finger. But when I tried to take the paper from her, overcome with inexpressible curiosity as you may well imagine, she exclaimed: “Not so, your Highness!”
and turned round and held up one of her crutches. “That man over there with the plumed hat, who is standing behind the crowd on a bench in the church doorway, will sell you this piece of paper, if you want it!” And with that, before I had even rightly grasped what she said, she left me standing there speechless with astonishment, clapped her box shut behind her, slung it over her shoulder, and mingled with the crowd around us; and I saw no more of her. At that moment, to my deep relief I must say, the gentleman whom the Elector had sent to the palace reappeared and informed him with great glee that the roebuck had been slaughtered and dragged before his eyes by two huntsmen into the kitchen. The Elector, in high good humour, put his arm through mine to accompany me from the square and said: “There we are, you see! The prophecy was just a common swindle and not worth our time and money!” But you can imagine our consternation when, even as he was speaking, a cry went up round the whole square, and everyone turned and stared at a huge butcher's dog which was trotting along towards us from the palace courtyard, its teeth sunk in the neck of the roebuck which it had seized as fair game in the kitchen; and with scullions and skivvies in hot pursuit it dropped the animal on the ground just three paces from us. And thus the woman's prophecy, the pledge she had given for the truth of everything else she had predicted, was fulfilled indeed, and the roebuck, dead though it was, had come to meet us in the market square. A thunderbolt from the winter sky could not have struck me a more deadly blow than this sight, and as soon as I was free of the company I had been in, I immediately set about discovering the whereabouts of the man with the plumed hat whom the woman had pointed out to me. But none of my people, though I made them search without pause for three days, could find the slightest trace of him. And now, my dear friend Kunz, only a few weeks ago I saw him with my own eyes in the farmhouse at Dahme!' And so saying he
dropped the Chamberlain's hand, wiped the sweat from his brow and fell back on to his bed.

The Chamberlain, who saw this incident in quite a different light but thought it would be wasted breath to try to persuade the Elector that his own view of it was mistaken, urged him to try yet again to find some means or other of getting possession of the piece of paper, and then to leave the fellow to his fate; but the Elector replied that no means whatsoever occurred to him, and that nevertheless the thought of not being able to get the paper, or indeed of even seeing all knowledge of its contents perish with the man who had it, tormented him to the point of despair. When his friend asked if attempts had been made to trace the gypsy-woman herself, the Elector answered that he had, under a fictitious pretext, ordered the government to search for the woman throughout the entire principality, which they were still vainly doing to this day, and that in any case, for reasons which he refused to go into, he doubted whether she could ever be traced in Saxony. Now it happened that the Chamberlain, on business connected with several large properties in Neumark inherited by his wife from the High Chancellor Count Kallheim, who had died soon after his dismissal from office, intended to travel to Berlin. And so, as he was genuinely fond of the Elector, he asked after brief reflection whether he would give him a free hand in the affair. When his master warmly grasped his hand and pressed it to his heart, saying: ‘Be as myself in this matter, and get me that piece of paper!', the Chamberlain delegated his affairs of office, advanced his departure by several days and, leaving his wife behind, set off for Berlin accompanied only by a few servants.