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He was silent for a while then he answered, "You are right there, Sir; for a sulphur cord, which by the will of Providence I was carrying in my pocket so as to set fire to the robber's nest from which I had been driven, I threw into the Elbe when I heard a child crying inside the castle, and I thought to myself, 'Let God's lightning burn it down; I will not!" Kohlhaas was disconcerted.
The Governor was instructed rather to use all the power at his command to protect the Squire just where he was, since he had to stay somewhere, but in order to pacify the good city of Wittenberg, the inhabitants were informed that a force of five hundred men under the command of Prince Friedrich of Meissen was already on the way to protect them from further molestation on the part of Kohlhaas.
Under the shelter of tents gaily decorated with pennons, erected on a hill over against the highroad, the whole company, still covered with the dust of the hunt, was sitting at table, served by pages, while lively music sounded from the trunk of an oak-tree, when Kohlhaas with his escort of troopers came riding slowly along the road from Dresden.
"Counting these two, there were, in all, seven knights lodging at the castle. If it had been you, you would have had the horses moved closer together. I said I would try to rent a stable in the village, but the castellan objected that he had to keep the horses under his own eyes and told me not to dare to take them away from the courtyard." "Hum!" said Kohlhaas. "What did you say to that?"
Hardly had the fellow delivered this answer of the horse-dealer's to the Governor of the Palace when the Lord High Chancellor was deposed, the President, Count Kallheim, was appointed Chief Justice of the Tribunal in his stead, and Kohlhaas was arrested by a special order of the Elector, heavily loaded with chains, and thrown into the city tower.
Kohlhaas answered, "I wish to refute the opinion you have of me, that I am an unjust man! You told me in your placard that my sovereign knows nothing about my case. Very well; procure me a safe-conduct and I will go to Dresden and lay it before him." "Impious and terrible man!" cried Luther, puzzled and, at the same time, reassured by these words.
With this he presented to him Kohlhaas who was standing behind him, and sitting down and putting on his glasses again, begged him to apply to the horse-dealer himself in the matter. Kohlhaas, whose expression gave no hint of what was going on in his mind, said that he was ready to follow the Baron to the market-place and inspect the black horses which the knacker had brought to the city.
Now it happened that, just at that moment, a noise was heard, caused by several police officials who were mounting the stairway, so that the woman, seized with sudden apprehension at being found by them in these quarters, exclaimed, "Good-by for the present, Kohlhaas, good-by for the present. When we meet again you shall not lack information concerning all these things."
In case they were to be taken from the knacker not-withstanding, and an attempt made to restore them to good condition in the stables of the knights, an ocular inspection by Kohlhaas would first be necessary in order to establish the aforesaid circumstance beyond doubt.
The Squire who had gone around the cart and gazed at the miserable animals, which seemed every moment about to expire, said in an embarrassed way that those were not the horses which he had taken from Kohlhaas; but Sir Kunz, the Chamberlain, casting at him a look of speechless rage which, had it been of iron, would have dashed him to pieces, and throwing back his cloak to disclose his orders and chain, stepped up to the knacker and asked if those were the black horses which the shepherd at Wilsdruf had gained possession of, and for which Squire Wenzel Tronka, to whom they belonged, had made requisition through the magistrate of that place.
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