or some negotiation, unknown
to me, the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg had a meeting in
Jueterboch, a market town, through which my way led me. When they had
settled every thing according to their wishes, they went through the
streets of the town, conversing in a friendly manner, that they might
see the fair, which was held with due merriment. Presently they came
to a gipsy woman, who sat upon a stool, and uttered prophesies to the
people who surrounded her, out of an almanack.

"This woman they asked, jestingly, whether she had any thing pleasant
to tell them. I, who had put up at an inn, with all my band, and
chanced to be present at the spot when this occurrence took place,
standing at the entrance to the church, could not hear, through the
crowd, what the strange woman said to the electors. When the people
whispered, laughingly, in each other's ears, that she would not
communicate her science to any body, and crowded thickly together on
account of the spectacle that was preparing, I got upon a bench, which
had been hewn out in the entrance to the church, not so much because I
was curious myself, as because I would make way for those that were.
Scarcely had I, from this elevation, taken a full survey of the
electors and the woman, who sat before them on the stool, and seemed to
be scribbling something, than she suddenly raised herself on her
crutches, and, looking round the people, fixed her eyes upon me, who
had not spoken a single word to her, and had never cared for such
sciences in my life.

"Pressing towards me, through the dense crowd, she said: 'Ah, if the
gentleman wishes to know, he had better ask you.' Then, your worship,
with her dry, bony hands she gave me this slip. All the people turned
round to me, and I said, perfectly astonished, 'Why, mother--what sort
of a present is this?' After all sorts of unintelligible stuff, among
which, to my great surprise, I heard my own name, she replied, 'It is
an amulet, thou horse-dealer, Kohlhaas, keep it well, it will one day
save thy life.' And so saying, she vanished. Now!" continued
Kohlhaas, good humouredly, "to tell the truth, sharply as matters have
been going on in Dresden, they have not cost me my life; and as for
Berlin, the future will show me how I get on there, and whether I shall
come off well."

At these words the elector seated himself on a bench, and, although to
the inquiry of the astonished lady, what was the matter with him, he
ans