"Well, then," cried Kohlhaas, "if you feel that, in case I am to continue my trade, justice must be done me, do not deny me the liberty which I must have in order to procure it!"
With that he stood up and said to the groom who had come to tell him that the chestnut horse was saddled, "To-morrow the bay horses must be harnessed up to take my wife to Schwerin." Lisbeth said that she had an idea! She rose, wiped the tears from her eyes, and, going over to the desk where he had seated himself, asked him if he would give her the petition and let her go to Berlin in his stead and hand it to the Elector. For more reasons than one Kohlhaas was deeply moved by this change of attitude. He drew her down on his lap, and said, "Dearest wife, that is hardly practicable. The sovereign is surrounded by a great many people; whoever wishes to approach him is exposed to many annoyances."
Lisbeth rejoined that, in a thousand cases, it was easier for a woman to approach him than it was for a man. "Give me the petition," she repeated, "and if all that you wish is the assurance that it shall reach his hands, I vouch for it; he shall receive it!"
Kohlhaas, who had had many proofs of her courage as well as of her wisdom, asked her how she intended to go about it. To this she answered, looking shamefacedly at the ground, that the castellan of the Elector's palace had paid court to her in former days, when he had been in service in Schwerin; that, to be sure, he was married now and had several children, but that she was not yet entirely forgotten, and, in short, her husband should leave it to her to take advantage of this circumstance as well as of many others which it would require too much time to enumerate. Kohlhaas kissed her joyfully, said that he accepted her proposal, and informed her that for her to lodge with the wife of the castellan would be all that was necessary to enable her to approach the sovereign inside the palace itself. Then he gave her the petition, had the bay horses harnessed, and sent her off, well bundled up, accompanied by Sternbald, his faithful groom.
Of all the unsuccessful steps, however, which he had taken in regard to his suit, this journey was the most unfortunate. For only a few days later Sternbald entered the courtyard again, leading the horses at a walk before the wagon, in which lay his wife, stretched out, with a dangerous contusion of the chest. Kohlhaas, who approached the wagon with a white face, could learn nothing coherent concerning the cause of the accident. The castellan, the groom said, had not been at home; they had therefore been obliged to put up at an inn that stood near the palace. Lisbeth had left this inn on the following morning, ordering the servant to stay behind with the horses; not until evening had she returned, and then only in this condition. It seemed she had pressed forward too boldly toward the person of the sovereign, and without any fault of his, but merely through the rough zeal of a body-guard which surrounded him, she had received a blow on the chest with the shaft of a lance. At least this was what the people said who, toward evening, had brought her back unconscious to the inn; for she herself could talk but little for the blood which flowed from her mouth. The petition had been taken from her afterward by a knight. Sternbald said that it had been his wish to jump on a horse at once and bring the news of the unfortunate accident to his master, but, in spite of the remonstrances of the surgeon who had been called in, she had insisted on being taken back to her husband at Kohlhaasenbrück without previously sending him word. She was completely exhausted by the journey and Kohlhaas put her to bed, where she lived a few days longer, struggling painfully to draw breath.
They tried in vain to restore her to consciousness in order to learn the particulars of what had occurred; she lay with fixed, already glassy eyes, and gave no answer.
Once only, shortly before her death, did she recover consciousness. A minister of the Lutheran church (which religion, then in its infancy, she had embraced, following the example of her husband) was standing beside her bed, reading in a loud solemn voice, full of emotion, a chapter of the Bible, when she suddenly looked up at him with a stern expression, and, taking the Bible out of his hand, as though there were no need to read to her from it, turned over the leaves for some time and seemed to be searching for some special passage. At last, with her fore-finger she pointed out to Kohlhaas, who was sitting beside her bed, the verse: "Forgive your enemies; do good to them that hate you." As she did so she pressed his hand with a look full of deep and tender feeling, and passed away.
Kohlhaas thought, "May God never forgive me the way I forgive the Squire!" Then he kissed her amid freely flowing tears, closed her eyes, and left the chamber.
He took the hundred gold gulden which the bailiff had already sent him for the stables in Dresden, and ordered a funeral ceremony that seemed more suitable for a princess than for her—an oaken coffin heavily trimmed with metal, cushions of silk with gold and silver tassels, and a grave eight yards deep lined with stones and mortar. He himself stood beside the vault with his youngest child in his arms and watched the work. On the day of the funeral the corpse, white as snow, was placed in a room which he had had draped with black cloth.
The minister had just completed a touching address by the side of the bier when the sovereign's answer to the petition which the dead woman had presented was delivered to Kohlhaas. By this decree he was ordered to fetch the horses from Tronka Castle and, under pain of imprisonment, not to bring any further action in the matter. Kohlhaas put the letter in his pocket and had the coffin carried out to the hearse.