This letter completely crushed the Elector and, to his utter dismay,
private communications from Berlin reached him a short time after,
announcing the institution of the lawsuit before the Supreme Court at
Berlin and containing the remark that Kohlhaas, in spite of all the
efforts of the lawyer assigned him, would in all probability end on
the scaffold. The unhappy sovereign determined, therefore, to make one
more effort, and in an autograph letter begged the Elector of
Brandenburg to spare Kohlhaas' life. He alleged as pretext that the
amnesty solemnly promised to this man did not lawfully permit the
execution of a death sentence upon him; he assured the Elector that,
in spite of the apparent severity with which Kohlhaas had been treated
in Saxony, it had never been his intention to allow the latter to die,
and described how wretched he should be if the protection which they
had pretended to be willing to afford the man from Berlin should, by
an unexpected turn of affairs, prove in the end to be more detrimental
to him than if he had remained in Dresden and his affair had been
decided according to the laws of Saxony.

The Elector of Brandenburg, to whom much of this declaration seemed
ambiguous and obscure, answered that the energy with which the
attorney of his Majesty the Emperor was proceeding made it absolutely
out of the question for him to conform to the wish expressed by the
Elector of Saxony and depart from the strict precepts of the law. He
remarked that the solicitude thus displayed really went too far,
inasmuch as the complaint against Kohlhaas on account of the crimes
which had been pardoned in the amnesty had, as a matter of fact, not
been entered at the Supreme Court at Berlin by him, the sovereign who
had granted the amnesty, but by the supreme head of the Empire who was
in no wise bound thereby. At the same time he represented to him how
necessary it was to make a fearful example of Kohlhaas in view of the
continued outrages of Nagelschmidt, who with unheard-of boldness was
already extending his depredations as far as Brandenburg, and begged
him, in case he refused to be influenced by these considerations, to
apply to His Majesty the Emperor himself, since, if a decree was to be
issued in favor of Kohlhaas, this could only be rendered after a
declaration on his Majesty's part.

The Elector fell ill again with grief and vexation over all these
unsuccessful attempts, and one morning, when the Chamberl