rty seized on the proposal with delight, and
armed with their rifles went in pairs over hedges and ditches into the
adjoining forest, and the consequence was that the elector and the Lady
Heloise, who hung on his arm to witness the spectacle, were to their
surprise immediately conducted by a messenger, who had been appointed
to attend them, through the court of the very house at which Kohlhaas
and the Brandenburg troops were stopping.

The lady, when she heard this, said: "Come, gracious sovereign, come!"
adding, as she playfully concealed in his doublet the chain which hung
from his neck, "let us slip into the farm, before our troop comes up,
and see the strange man who is passing the night there."

The elector, changing colour, seized her hand and said: "Heloise, what
notion has possessed you?" But when, perceiving his surprise, she
answered that no one would recognise him in his hunting dress, and
also, at the very same moment, two hunting attendants, who had already
satisfied their curiosity, came out of the house and said, that in
consequence of an arrangement of the seneschals, neither the knight nor
the horse-dealer knew of whom consisted the party assembled near Dahme,
the elector, smiling, pressed his hat over his eyes, and said: "Folly,
thou rulest the world, and thy throne is the mouth of a pretty woman."

Kohlhaas was sitting on a heap of straw, with his back against the
wall, feeding the child that had fallen sick at Herzberg, with rolls
and milk, when his noble visitors entered the farm-house. The lady, to
introduce the conversation, asked him who he was, what was the matter
with the child, what crime he had committed, and whither they were
conducting him under such an escort. He doffed his leather cap, and,
without ceasing from his occupation, gave her a short, but satisfactory
answer.

The elector, who stood behind the huntsman, and observed a little
leaden case that hung from Michael's neck by a silken thread, asked
him, as there was nothing better to talk about, what this meant, and
what was kept in it.

"Ah, your worship," said Kohlhaas, detaching it from his neck, opening
it, and taking out a little slip of paper fastened with a wafer, "there
is something very peculiar about this case. It is about seven months
ago, on the very day after my wife's burial, when I had set out from
Kohlhaasenbrueck, as perhaps you know, to seize the person of Squire von
Tronka, who had done me much wrong, that f