ht her back unconscious to the inn; for she
herself could talk but little for the blood which flowed from her
mouth. The petition had been taken from her afterward by a knight.
Sternbald said that it had been his wish to jump on a horse at once
and bring the news of the unfortunate accident to his master, but, in
spite of the remonstrances of the surgeon who had been called in, she
had insisted on being taken back to her husband at Kohlhaasenbrueck
without previously sending him word. She was completely exhausted by
the journey and Kohlhaas put her to bed, where she lived a few days
longer, struggling painfully to draw breath.

They tried in vain to restore her to consciousness in order to learn
the particulars of what had occurred; she lay with fixed, already
glassy eyes, and gave no answer.

Once only, shortly before her death, did she recover consciousness. A
minister of the Lutheran church (which religion, then in its infancy,
she had embraced, following the example of her husband) was standing
beside her bed, reading in a loud solemn voice, full of emotion, a
chapter of the Bible, when she suddenly looked up at him with a stern
expression, and, taking the Bible out of his hand, as though there
were no need to read to her from it, turned over the leaves for some
time and seemed to be searching for some special passage. At last,
with her fore-finger she pointed out to Kohlhaas, who was sitting
beside her bed, the verse: "Forgive your enemies; do good to them that
hate you." As she did so she pressed his hand with a look full of deep
and tender feeling, and passed away.

Kohlhaas thought, "May God never forgive me the way I forgive the
Squire!" Then he kissed her amid freely flowing tears, closed her
eyes, and left the chamber.

He took the hundred gold gulden which the bailiff had already sent him
for the stables in Dresden, and ordered a funeral ceremony that seemed
more suitable for a princess than for her--an oaken coffin heavily
trimmed with metal, cushions of silk with gold and silver tassels, and
a grave eight yards deep lined with stones and mortar. He himself
stood beside the vault with his youngest child in his arms and watched
the work. On the day of the funeral the corpse, white as snow, was
placed in a room which he had had draped with black cloth.

The minister had just completed a touching address by the side of the
bier when the sovereign's answer to the petition which the dead woman
had presente