Squire's chargers out of a large stone stable
which was threatened by the flames. Kohlhaas, who at that very moment
spied his two blacks in a little shed roofed with straw, asked the man
why he did not rescue the two blacks. The latter, sticking the key in
the stable-door, answered that he surely must see that the shed was
already in flames. Kohlhaas tore the key violently from the
stable-door, threw it over the wall, and, raining blows as thick as
hail on the man with the flat of his sword, drove him into the burning
shed and, amid the horrible laughter of the bystanders, forced him to
rescue the black horses. Nevertheless, when the man, pale with fright,
reappeared with the horses, only a few moments before the shed fell in
behind him, he no longer found Kohlhaas. Betaking himself to the men
gathered in the castle inclosure, he asked the horse-dealer, who
several times turned his back on him, what he was to do with the
animals now.

Kohlhaas suddenly raised his foot with such terrible force that the
kick, had it landed, would have meant death; then, without answering,
he mounted his bay horse, stationed himself under the gateway of the
castle, and, while his men continued their work of destruction,
silently awaited the break of day.

When the morning dawned the entire castle had burned down and only the
walls remained standing; no one was left in it but Kohlhaas and his
seven men. He dismounted from his horse and, in the bright sunlight
which illuminated every crack and corner, once more searched the
inclosure. When he had to admit, hard though it was for him to do so,
that the expedition against the castle had failed, with a heart full
of pain and grief he sent Herse and some of the other men to gather
news of the direction in which the Squire had fled. He felt
especially troubled about a rich nunnery for ladies of rank, Erlabrunn
by name, which was situated on the shores of the Mulde, and whose
abbess, Antonia Tronka, was celebrated in the neighborhood as a pious,
charitable, and saintly woman. The unhappy Kohlhaas thought it only
too probable that the Squire, stripped as he was of all necessities,
had taken refuge in this nunnery, since the abbess was his own aunt
and had been his governess in his early childhood. After informing
himself of these particulars, Kohlhaas ascended the tower of the
castellan's quarters in the interior of which there was still a
habitable room, and there he drew up a so-called "Kohlha