sults and petitioning the Court at Dresden
directly for investigation and punishment of the outrage, had, as a
preliminary, applied to the Squire Tronka for further information.

The magistrate, who had stopped in his carriage outside of Kohlhaas'
house and seemed to have been instructed to deliver this message to
the horse-dealer, could give the latter no satisfactory answer to his
perplexed question as to why this step had been taken. He was
apparently in a hurry to continue his journey, and merely added that
the Governor sent Kohhlhaas word to be patient. Not until the very end
of the short interview did the horse-dealer divine from some casual
words he let fall, that Count Kallheim was related by marriage to the
house of Tronka.

Kohlhaas, who no longer took any pleasure either in his
horse-breeding, or his house or his farm, scarcely even in his wife
and children, waited all the next month, full of gloomy forebodings as
to the future. And, just as he had expected at the expiration of this
time, Herse, somewhat benefited by the baths, came back from
Brandenburg bringing a rather lengthy decree and a letter from the
City Governor. The latter ran as follows: He was sorry that he could
do nothing in Kohlhaas' behalf; he was sending him a decision from the
Chancery of State and he advised him to fetch away the horses that he
had left behind at the Tronka Castle, and then to let the matter drop.

The decree read as follows: "According to the report of the tribunal
at Dresden, he was a good-for-nothing, quarrelsome person; the Squire
with whom he had left the horses was not keeping them from him in any
way; let him send to the castle and take them away, or at least inform
the Squire where to send them to him; in any case he should not
trouble the Chancery of the State with such petty quarrels and
mischief-making."

Kohlhaas, who was not concerned about the horses themselves--he would
have felt just as much pain if it had been a question of a couple of
dogs--Kohlhaas foamed with rage when he received this letter. As often
as he heard a noise in the courtyard he looked toward the gateway with
the most revolting feelings of anticipation that had ever agitated his
breast, to see whether the servants of the Squire had come to restore
to him, perhaps even with an apology, the starved and worn-out horses.
This was the only situation which he felt that his soul, well
disciplined though it had been by the world, was not prepar