ively support. His extensive trade in horses had secured him
the acquaintance of the most important men of the country, and the
honesty with which he conducted his business had won him their good
will.

Kohlhaas dined cheerfully several times with his lawyer, who was
himself a man of consequence, left a sum of money with him to defray
the costs of the lawsuit and, fully reassured by the latter as to the
outcome of the case, returned, after the lapse of some weeks, to his
wife Lisbeth in Kohlhaasenbrueck.

Nevertheless months passed, and the year was nearing its close before
he received even a statement from Saxony concerning the suit which he
had instituted there, let alone the final decree itself. After he had
applied several times more to the court, he sent a confidential letter
to his lawyer asking what was the cause of such undue delay. He was
told in reply that the suit had been dismissed in the Dresden courts
at the instance of an influential person. To the astonished reply of
the horse-dealer asking what was the reason of this, the lawyer
informed him that Squire Wenzel Tronka was related to two young
noblemen, Hinz and Kunz Tronka, one of whom was Cup-bearer to the
person of the sovereign, and the other actually Chamberlain. He also
advised Kohlhaas not to make any further appeal to the court of law,
but to try to regain possession of his horses which were still at
Tronka Castle, giving him to understand that the Squire, who was then
stopping in the capital, seemed to have ordered his people to deliver
them to him. He closed with a request to excuse him from executing any
further commissions in the matter, in case Kohlhaas refused to be
content with this.

At this time Kohlhaas happened to be in Brandenburg, where the City
Governor, Heinrich von Geusau, to whose jurisdiction Kohlhaasenbrueck
belonged, was busy establishing several charitable institutions for
the sick and the poor out of a considerable fund which had fallen to
the city. He was especially interested in fitting up, for the benefit
of invalids, a mineral spring which rose in one of the villages in the
vicinity, and which was thought to have greater powers than it
subsequently proved to possess. As Kohlhaas had had numerous dealings
with him at the time of his sojourn at Court and was therefore known
to him, he allowed Herse, the head groom, who, ever since that unlucky
day in Tronka Castle, had suffered pains in the chest when he
breathed, to tr