rlain, wrote to Kohlhaas,
advising him not to refuse such an offer in case it should be made to
him. Nevertheless he returned a short and not very civil answer to the
president, in which he requested him to spare him all private
commissions of the kind, advising the chamberlain to apply to the
horse-dealer himself, whom he described a very honest and modest man.
Kohlhaas's resolution was already weakened by the occurrence in the
market-place, and following the advice of the chancellor, he only
waited for overtures on the part of the squire or his connections
readily to meet them with a full pardon for all that had past. But the
knights' pride was too sensitive to allow them to make such overtures,
and highly indignant at the answer they had received from the
chancellor, they showed the letter to the elector, who on the following
morning visited the chamberlain as he still lay ill of his wounds in
his room. With a weak and plaintive voice, the invalid asked him
whether, when he had already risked his life to settle this matter
according to his wishes, he should now expose his honour to the censure
of the world, and appear with a request for indulgence before a man,
who had brought all imaginable shame upon him and his family. The
elector having read through the letter, asked Count Kallheim, with some
confusion, whether the tribunal would not be justified in taking its
ground with Kohlhaas on the circumstance that the horses could not be
restored, and then in decreeing a mere compensation in money as if they
were dead. The count replied, "Gracious sir, they are dead!--dead in
the legal sense of the word, because they have no value, and they will
be physically dead before they can be removed from the flayer's yard to
the knight's stables."

Upon this the elector putting up the letter, said that he would speak
about it to the chancellor, consoled the chamberlain, who arose in his
bed and thankfully seized his hand, and after he had told him to take
every care of his health, rose very graciously from his chair, and took
his leave.

Thus stood matters in Dresden, while another storm still more
formidable was gathering over poor Kohlhaas from Luetzen, and the
spiteful knights had tact enough to draw down its flashes upon his
unlucky head. John Nagelschmidt, one of the men collected by Kohlhaas,
and dismissed after the appearance of the amnesty, had thought fit a
few weeks afterwards to assemble anew a portion of the ra