pestilence, your presence destruction!"

Without stirring from the spot Kohlhaas drew his pistol and said,
"Most reverend Sir, if you touch the bell this pistol will stretch me
lifeless at your feet! Sit down and hear me. You are not safer among
the angels, whose psalms you are writing down, than you are with me."

Luther sat down and asked, "What do you want?" Kohlhaas answered, "I
wish to refute the opinion you have of me, that I am an unjust man!
You told me in your placard that my sovereign knows nothing about my
case. Very well; procure me a safe-conduct and I will go to Dresden
and lay it before him."

"Impious and terrible man!" cried Luther, puzzled and, at the same
time, reassured by these words. "Who gave you the right to attack
Squire Tronka in pursuance of a decree issued on your own authority,
and, when you did not find him in his castle, to visit with fire and
sword the whole community which protects him?"

Kohlhaas answered, "Reverend Sir, no one, henceforth. Information
which I received from Dresden deceived and misled me! The war which I
am waging against society is a crime, so long as I haven't been cast
out--and you have assured me that I have not."

"Cast out!" cried Luther, looking at him. "What mad thoughts have
taken possession of you? Who could have cast you out from the
community of the state in which you lived? Indeed where, as long as
states have existed, has there ever been a case of any one, no matter
who, being cast out of such a community?"

"I call that man cast out," answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, "who
is denied the protection of the laws. For I need this protection, if
my peaceable business is to prosper. Yes, it is for this that, with
all my possessions, I take refuge in this community, and he who denies
me this protection casts me out among the savages of the desert; he
places in my hand--how can you try to deny it?--the club with which to
protect myself."

"Who has denied you the protection of the laws?" cried Luther. "Did I
not write you that your sovereign, to whom you addressed your
complaint, has never heard of it? If state-servants behind his back
suppress lawsuits or otherwise trifle with his sacred name without his
knowledge, who but God has the right to call him to account for
choosing such servants, and are you, lost and terrible man, entitled
to judge him therefor?"

"Very well," answered Kohlhaas, "if the sovereign does not cast me out
I will return agai