sed since the departure of this man and that the instructions he
had received had charged him to settle the business with all possible
dispatch immediately after his arrival in Vienna. A delay, the Prince
added, would have been all the more inadvisable in this case, as the
Brandenburg attorney, Zaeuner, was proceeding against Squire Wenzel
Tronka with the most stubborn persistence and had already petitioned
the court for the provisional removal of the black horses from the
hands of the knacker with a view to their future restoration to good
condition, and, in spite of all the arguments of the opposite side,
had carried his point.

The Elector, ringing the bell, said, "No matter; it is of no
importance," and turning around again toward the Prince asked
indifferently how other things were going in Dresden and what had
occurred during his absence. Then, incapable of hiding his inner state
of mind, he saluted him with a wave of the hand and dismissed him.

That very same day the Elector sent him a written demand for all the
official documents concerning Kohlhaas, under the pretext that, on
account of the political importance of the affair, he wished to go
over it himself. As he could not bear to think of destroying the man
from whom alone he could receive information concerning the secrets
contained in the paper, he composed an autograph letter to the
Emperor; in this he affectionately and urgently requested that, for
weighty reasons, which possibly he would explain to him in greater
detail after a little while, he be allowed to withdraw for a time,
until a further decision had been reached, the complaint which
Eibenmaier had entered against Kohlhaas.

The Emperor, in a note drawn up by the State Chancery, replied that
the change which seemed suddenly to have taken place in the Elector's
mind astonished him exceedingly; that the report which had been
furnished him on the part of Saxony had made the Kohlhaas affair a
matter which concerned the entire Holy Roman Empire; that, in
consequence, he, the Emperor, as head of the same, had felt it his
duty to appear before the house of Brandenburg in this, as plaintiff
in this affair, and that, therefore; since the Emperor's counsel,
Franz Mueller, had gone to Berlin in the capacity of attorney in order
to call Kohlhaas to account for the violation of the public peace, the
complaint could in no wise be withdrawn now and the affair must take
its course in conformity with the law.