at once among all his purposes of
distinction.

He put on the disguise of a Thuringian farmer, told Sternbald that
business of importance called him to Wittenberg, entrusted him, in the
presence of some of his principal men, with the command of the band
left at Luetzen, and promising to return in three days, within which
time no attack was to be feared, set off to Wittenberg at once.

He put up at an inn under a feigned name, and at the approach of night,
wrapped in his mantle, and provided with a brace of pistols which he
had seized at the Tronkenburg, walked into Luther's apartment. Luther
was sitting at his desk, occupied with his books and papers, and as
soon as he saw the remarkable looking stranger open the door, and then
bolt it behind him, he asked who he was and what he wanted. The man,
reverentially holding his hat in his hand, had no sooner answered, with
some misgiving as to the alarm he might occasion, that he was Michael
Kohlhaas, the horse-dealer, than Luther cried out, "Away with thee,"
and added, as he rose from his desk to ring the bell: "Thy breath is
pestiferous, and thy approach is destruction!"

Kohlhaas, without stirring from the spot said: "Reverend sir, this
pistol, if you touch the bell, lays me a corpse at your feet. Sit down
and hear me. Among the angels, whose psalms you write, you are not
safer than with me."

"But what dost thou want?" asked Luther, sitting down.

"To refute your opinion that I am an unjust man," replied Kohlhaas.
"You have said in your placard that my sovereign knows nothing of my
affairs. Well, give me a safe-conduct, and I will go to Dresden, and
lay it before him."

"Godless and terrible man!" exclaimed Luther, both perplexed and
alarmed by these words, "Who gave thee a right to attack Squire von
Tronka, with no other authority than thine own decree, and then, when
thou didst not find him in his castle, to visit with fire and sword
every community that protected him?"

"Now, reverend sir," answered Kohlhaas, "the intelligence I received
from Dresden misled me! The war which I carry on with the community of
mankind is unjust, if I have not been expelled from it, as you assure
me!"

"Expelled from it?" cried Luther, staring at him, "What madness is
this? Who expelled thee from the community of the state in which thou
art living? When, since the existence of states, was there an instance
of such an expulsion of any one, whoever he might be?"

"I call h