ble to buy the black horses whether they belonged to Kohlhaas or
not, the Chamberlain, cursing the father and mother who had given
birth to the Squire, stepped aside out of the crowd and threw back his
cloak, absolutely at a loss to know what he should do or leave undone.
Defiantly determined not to leave the square just because the rabble
were staring at him derisively and with their handkerchiefs pressed
tight over their mouths seemed to be waiting only for him to depart
before bursting out into laughter, he called to Baron Wenk, an
acquaintance who happened to be riding by, and begged him to stop at
the house of the Lord High Chancellor, Count Wrede, and through the
latter's instrumentality to have Kohlhaas brought there to look at the
black horses.

When the Baron, intent upon this errand, entered the chamber of the
Lord High Chancellor, it so happened that Kohlhaas was just then
present, having been summoned by a messenger of the court to give
certain explanations of which they stood in need concerning the
deposit in Luetzen. While the Chancellor, with an annoyed look, rose
from his chair and asked the horse-dealer, whose person was unknown to
the Baron, to step to one side with his papers, the latter informed
him of the dilemma in which the lords Tronka found themselves. He
explained that the knacker from Doebeln, acting on a defective
requisition from the court at Wilsdruf, had appeared with horses whose
condition was so frightful that Squire Wenzel could not help
hesitating to pronounce them the ones belonging to Kohlhaas. In case
they were to be taken from the knacker not-withstanding, and an
attempt made to restore them to good condition in the stables of the
knights, an ocular inspection by Kohlhaas would first be necessary in
order to establish the aforesaid circumstance beyond doubt. "Will you
therefore have the goodness," he concluded, "to have a guard fetch the
horse-dealer from his house and conduct him to the market-place where
the horses are standing?" The Lord High Chancellor, taking his glasses
from his nose, said that the Baron was laboring under a double
delusion--first, in thinking that the fact in question could be
ascertained only by means of an ocular inspection by Kohlhaas, and
then, in imagining that he, the Chancellor, possessed the authority to
have Kohlhaas taken by a guard wherever the Squire happened to wish.
With this he presented to him Kohlhaas who was standing behind him,
and sittin