whether he were a prisoner, and whether he should
consider that the amnesty which had been solemnly promised to him
before the eyes of the whole world had been broken. At which the
Baron, his face turning suddenly a fiery red, wheeled around and,
stepping close up to him and looking him in the eyes, answered, "Yes!
Yes! Yes!" Then he turned his back upon him and, leaving Kohlhaas
standing there, returned to Nagelschmidt's followers.

At this Kohlhaas left the room, and although he realized that the
steps he had taken had rendered much more difficult the only means of
rescue that remained, namely, flight, he nevertheless was glad he had
done as he had, since he was now, on his part, likewise released from
obligation to observe the conditions of the amnesty. When he reached
home he had the horses unharnessed, and, very sad and shaken, went to
his room accompanied by the government clerk. While this man, in a way
which aroused the horse-dealer's disgust, assured him that it must all
be due to a misunderstanding which would shortly be cleared up, the
constables, at a sign from him, bolted all the exits which led from
the house into the courtyard. At the same time the clerk assured
Kohlhaas that the main entrance at the front of the house still
remained open and that he could use it as he pleased.

Nagelschmidt, meanwhile, had been so hard pushed on all sides by
constables and soldiers in the woods of the Ore Mountains, that,
entirely deprived, as he was, of the necessary means of carrying
through a role of the kind which he had undertaken, he hit upon the
idea of inducing Kohlhaas to take sides with him in reality. As a
traveler passing that way had informed him fairly accurately of the
status of Kohlhaas' lawsuit in Dresden, he believed that, in spite of
the open enmity which existed between them, he could persuade the
horse-dealer to enter into a new alliance with him. He therefore sent
off one of his men to him with a letter, written in almost unreadable
German, to the effect that if he would come to Altenburg and resume
command of the band which had gathered there from the remnants of his
former troops who had been dispersed, he, Nagelschmidt, was ready to
assist him to escape from his imprisonment in Dresden by furnishing
him with horses, men, and money. At the same time he promised Kohlhaas
that, in the future, he would be more obedient and in general better
and more orderly than he had been before; and to prove his