"Cast out!" cried Luther, looking at him. "What mad thoughts have taken possession of you? Who could have cast you out from the community of the state in which you lived? Indeed where, as long as states have existed, has there ever been a case of any one, no matter who, being cast out of such a community?"
"I call that man cast out," answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, "who is denied the protection of the laws. For I need this protection, if my peaceable business is to prosper. Yes, it is for this that, with all my possessions, I take refuge in this community, and he who denies me this protection casts me out among the savages of the desert; he places in my hand—how can you try to deny it?—the club with which to protect myself."
"Who has denied you the protection of the laws?" cried Luther. "Did I not write you that your sovereign, to whom you addressed your complaint, has never heard of it? If state-servants behind his back suppress lawsuits or otherwise trifle with his sacred name without his knowledge, who but God has the right to call him to account for choosing such servants, and are you, lost and terrible man, entitled to judge him therefor?"
"Very well," answered Kohlhaas, "if the sovereign does not cast me out I will return again to the community which he protects. Procure for me, I repeat it, safe-conduct to Dresden; then I will disperse the band of men that I have collected in the castle at Lützen and I will once again lay my complaint, which was rejected, before the courts of the land."
With an expression of vexation, Luther tossed in a heap the papers that were lying on his desk, and was silent. The attitude of defiance which this singular man had assumed toward the state irritated him, and reflecting upon the judgment which Kohlhaas had issued at Kohlhaasenbrück against the Squire, he asked what it was that he demanded of the tribunal at Dresden. Kohlhaas answered, "The punishment of the Squire according to the law; restoration of the horses to their former condition; and compensation for the damages which I, as well as my groom Herse, who fell at Mühlberg, have suffered from the outrage perpetrated upon us."
Luther cried, "Compensation for damages! Money by the thousands, from Jews and Christians, on notes and securities, you have borrowed to defray the expenses of your wild revenge! Shall you put that amount also on the bill when it comes to reckoning up the costs?"
"God forbid!" answered Kohlhaas. "House and farm and the means that I possessed I do not demand back, any more than the expenses of my wife's funeral! Herse's old mother will present the bill for her son's medical treatment, as well as a list of those things which he lost at Tronka Castle; and the loss which I suffered on account of not selling the black horses the government may have estimated by an expert."
Luther exclaimed, as he gazed at him, "Mad, incomprehensible, and amazing man! After your sword has taken the most ferocious revenge upon the Squire which could well be imagined, what impels you to insist upon a judgment against him, the severity of which, when it is finally pronounced, will fall so lightly upon him?"
Kohlhaas answered, while a tear rolled down his cheek, "Most reverend Sir! It has cost me my wife; Kohlhaas intends to prove to the world that she did not perish in an unjust quarrel. Do you, in these particulars, yield to my will and let the court of justice speak; in all other points that may be contested I will yield to you."
Luther said, "See here, what you demand is just, if indeed the circumstances are such as is commonly reported; and if you had only succeeded in having your suit decided by the sovereign before you arbitrarily proceeded to avenge yourself, I do not doubt that your demands would have been granted, point for point. But, all things considered, would it not have been better for you to pardon the Squire for your Redeemer's sake, take back the black horses, thin and worn-out as they were, and mount and ride home to Kohlhaasenbrück to fatten them in your own stable?"