The Marquise of O and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

gain from plunder, naturally attracts an increasing number of followers. He sets fire toWittenberg three times, defeating or evading the ever more formidable military expeditions sent against him, and also attacks Leipzig, to which he thinks the Junker has been taken, although he is in fact still in Wittenberg under heavy guard. At this point Luther intervenes with a public proclamation addressed to Kohlhaas, condemning his course of action. The horse-dealer, who deeply reveres Luther, returns secretly to Wittenberg and presents himself to the theologian. Society, he argues, has set him outside the law by refusing him the law’s protection; he is therefore justified and compelled to use force. His quarrel with the Junker has already cost him his wife and it is too late to stop now. Luther, as his spiritual father, urges him (as his dying wife had done) to forgive his enemy, and when Kohlhaas remains obdurate on this point, refuses him absolution. He consents, however, to negotiate on his behalf with the Elector of Saxony who, it appears, has improperly been kept in ignorance of Kohlhaas’s justified legal claims. When Kohlhaas has left, Luther writes to the Elector, pointing out that the horse-dealer has in fact been wronged and virtually outlawed, and that in view of the increasingly strong public feeling on his side there is danger of a general revolt. He advises the Elector not to treat him as a rebel but to allow his case to be reopened in Dresden, granting him for this purpose a safe-conduct to the Saxon capital and an amnesty in respect of his deeds of violence. The Elector discusses this now extremely embarrassing situation with his advisers, who include Wenzel von Tronka’s cousins, Hinz and Kunz, both high officials at the court, and eventually decides to issue a proclamation to Kohlhaas in the sense advised by Luther. On reading it, Kohlhaas disbands all his men in accordance with the Elector’s stipulation, proceeds to Dresden and reopens his case against Junker Wenzel, applying to the court as before for his punishment, for damages and for restitution of all losses, including restoration of the horses to their former healthy condition. The Junker isreleased from Wittenberg and received in Dresden by his cousins, who are furious with him for making their family a laughing-stock. To make matters worse, it turns out after some investigation that the two horses are still alive but in so neglected a state that they have already been handed over to a knacker, who is ordered to bring them to Dresden. Hearing that the emaciated animals are on public display in the market square, Wenzel and Kunz von Tronka hasten to the scene; Kohlhaas is summoned to identify the horses as his, but the Tronka servants refuse to touch creatures in such a disgraceful condition and a riot breaks out. This grotesque incident turns public sentiment against the horse-dealer, and he is now willing to settle out of court for a simple payment of compensation. But chance, or rather the natural entropy of events in a corrupt human world, again operates against him, for a number of his officially dispersed followers led by a certain brutal and unscrupulous Johann Nagelschmidt (who is mentioned in Kleist’s source) have started to plunder the countryside under cover of Kohlhaas’s name and cause. Kohlhaas at once publicly dissociates himself from Nagelschmidt, but the Tronka family see their advantage: the amnesty is in danger of collapsing, time is on their side, and they begin to prolong the case by vexatious special pleadings. Kohlhaas notices that the number of lansquenets set to guard his house have increased and realizes that he has in effect been made a prisoner. To test this – for it is clear by now that he is obsessed by a desire to unmask official hypocrisy and politic dissimulation – he attempts to leave on a social visit but is prevented by a series of transparent pretexts. Nagelschmidt now writes to him