uire to Dresden,
whither he himself, for many reasons, wished to be removed; the mob,
deaf to reason, and armed with pikes and staves would hear nothing, and
they not only ill-used some members of the council, who were urging too
severe measures, but they were on the point of tearing down the
squire's house, when the governor, Otto von Gorgas, appeared in the
city at the head of his troop of horse. This venerable nobleman, whose
presence alone had usually awed the people to respect and obedience,
had succeeded in capturing three stragglers from the incendiary's band
at the very gates of the city, as if by way of compensation for the
failure of his enterprise; and as, while these fellows were loaded with
chains in sight of the people, he assured the magistrates, in a
seasonable address, that he thought he was in a fair way to capture
Kohlhaas himself, and in a short time to bring him in, also enchained,
he succeeded in disarming the rage of the assembled multitude, and in
appeasing them, in some measure, as to the squire's remaining among
them, till the return of the courier from Dresden. He alighted from
horseback, and with some of his knights, the palisades being removed,
he entered the house, where he found the squire, who was continually
fainting, in the hands of two physicians, who, by the aid of essences
and stimulants, were endeavouring to restore him to consciousness.
Herr Otto von Gorgas, feeling that this was not the moment to bandy
words with the squire about his bad conduct, merely told him, with a
look of silent contempt, to dress himself, and for his own security, to
follow him to apartments in the prison. When they had put him on a
doublet, and set a helmet on his head, and he appeared in the street
with his breast half open for want of air, leaning on the arm of the
governor and his brother-in-law, Count von Gerschau, the most frightful
imprecations ascended to the skies. The mob, kept back with difficulty
by the soldiers, called him a blood-sucker, a miserable pest to the
country, the curse of the city of Wittenberg, and the destruction of
Saxony. After a melancholy procession through the ruins, during which
the squire often let the helmet drop from his head without missing it,
and a knight as often set it on again from behind him, he reached the
prison, and vanished into a town under the protection of a strong
guard. In the meanwhile, the city was thrown into new alarm by the
return of the courier