gging him to take them along, and various
considerations too intricate to unravel made him decide to pick them
up and carry them with him to the hearing. Kohlhaas placed the
children beside him, and the Prince, after looking benevolently at
them and asking, with friendly interest, their names and ages, went on
to inform Kohlhaas what liberties Nagelschmidt, his former follower,
was taking in the valleys of the Ore Mountains, and handing him the
latter's so-called mandates he told him to produce whatever he had to
offer for his vindication. Although the horse-dealer was deeply
alarmed by these shameful and traitorous papers, he nevertheless had
little difficulty in explaining satisfactorily to so upright a man as
the Prince the groundlessness of the accusations brought against him
on this score. Besides the fact that, so far as he could observe, he
did not, as the matter now stood, need any help as yet from a third
person in bringing about the decision of his lawsuit, which was
proceeding most favorably, some papers which he had with him and
showed to the Prince made it appear highly improbable that
Nagelschmidt should be inclined to render him help of that sort, for,
shortly before the dispersion of the band in Luetzen, he had been on
the point of having the fellow hanged for a rape committed in the
open country, and other rascalities. Only the appearance of the
electoral amnesty had saved Nagelschmidt, as it had severed all
relations between them, and on the next day they had parted as mortal
enemies.

Kohlhaas, with the Prince's approval of the idea, sat down and wrote a
letter to Nagelschmidt in which he declared that the latter's pretense
of having taken the field in order to maintain the amnesty which had
been violated with regard to him and his band, was a disgraceful and
vicious fabrication. He told him that, on his arrival in Dresden, he
had neither been imprisoned nor handed over to a guard, also that his
lawsuit was progressing exactly as he wished, and, as a warning for
the rabble who had gathered around Nagelschmidt, he gave him over to
the full vengeance of the law for the outrages which he had committed
in the Ore Mountains after the publication of the amnesty. Some
portions of the criminal prosecution which the horse-dealer had
instituted against him in the castle at Luetzen on account of the
above-mentioned disgraceful acts, were also appended to the letter to
enlighten the people concerning the good-fo