hapter-warden, a
little old man with snow-white hair, shooting furious glances at
Kohlhaas, was having his armor put on and, in a bold voice, called to
the men-servants surrounding him to ring the storm-bell, the abbess,
white as a sheet, and holding the silver image of the Crucified One in
her hand, descended the sloping driveway and, with all her nuns, flung
herself down before Kohlhaas' horse.

Herse and Sternbald overpowered the chapter-warden, who had no sword
in his hand, and led him off as a prisoner among the horses, while
Kohlhaas asked the abbess where Squire Wenzel Tronka was. She
unfastened from her girdle a large ring of keys, and answered, "In
Wittenberg, Kohlhaas, worthy man!"--adding, in a shaking voice, "Fear
God, and do no wrong!" Kohlhaas, plunged back into the hell of
unsatisfied thirst for revenge, wheeled his horse and was about to
cry, "Set fire to the buildings!" when a terrific thunder-bolt struck
close beside him. Turning his horse around again toward the abbess he
asked her whether she had received his mandate. The lady answered in a
weak, scarcely audible voice--"Just a few moments ago!" "When?" "Two
hours after the Squire, my nephew, had taken his departure, as truly
as God is my help!" When Waldmann, the groom, to whom Kohlhaas turned
with a lowering glance, stammered out a confirmation of this fact,
saying that the waters of the Mulde, swollen by the rain, had
prevented his arriving until a few moments ago, Kohlhaas came to his
senses. A sudden, terrible downpour of rain, sweeping across the
pavement of the courtyard and extinguishing the torches, relaxed the
tension of the unhappy man's grief; doffing his hat curtly to the
abbess, he wheeled his horse, dug in his spurs, calling "Follow me, my
brothers; the Squire is in Wittenberg," and left the nunnery.

The night having set in, he stopped at an inn on the highroad, and had
to rest here for a day because the horses were so exhausted. As he
clearly saw that with a troop of ten men (for his company numbered
that many now) he could not defy a place like Wittenberg, he drew up a
second mandate, in which, after a short account of what had happened
to him in the land, he summoned "every good Christian," as he
expressed it, to whom he "solemnly promised bounty-money and other
perquisites of war, to take up his quarrel against Squire Tronka as
the common enemy of all Christians." In another mandate which appeared
shortly after this he called hi