Chapter 9

"_Ad loca_, gentlemen!" he exclaimed to the counsellors; and when they had taken their places, he said with proud dignity, "The murderer is in our power; it is time, then, for us to do our duty. Let double watches be placed at the door. These will remain closed against every one till justice is satisfied. At the break of day the judges shall hold a criminal court; and as the murdered person was my son, Doctor Jacob Grenwitz will preside in my place. I do not conceal from you, colleagues, that the criminal has a strong party here, and that all the nobles will be on his side. Therefore, that justice may have its course, unchecked of human fears, I herewith declare the town in danger, and the council permanent. The horse-police shall be collectively summoned, and mount guard before the Sessions'-house completely armed; the gens d'armes shall be at their alarm-posts; the various guilds be warned to hold themselves in readiness with their weapons, that they may come forward at the first sound of the alarm-bell. Put all this into execution immediately, Mr. Marshalman, and then return to our sessions to report progress and receive our farther orders."

"God deliver us! how will all this end?" sighed Kernichen, and left the room; in which a deadly silence prevailed, as each of the council was sufficiently occupied with his own thoughts, and yet hesitated to impart them to another. In the midst of this the city-serjeant, Rudolph, announced Doctor Heidenreich, who wished to speak in private with the burgomaster.

"In the little room by the judges' chamber," said Erasmus, whither he went himself. The doctor was already waiting for him, and by his dress it might be seen that he had just jumped out of bed, and flung them on in a hurry.

"Let my hurry excuse the carelessness of my attire, Mr. Burgomaster; necessity knows no law. A report runs through the town, that Tausdorf has been seized at Saltzbrunn by your servants, and now lies a prisoner in the Hildebrand."

"Such is the truth," replied Erasmus calmly.

"That is a great misfortune for the town," sighed Heidenreich.

"Are you out of your senses? If you have nothing more rational to bring forward, you had better have remained in bed and slept off your wonderful dreams."

"Mr. Burgomaster!" cried Heidenreich firmly, and seized the old man's hand; "you know me for an honest citizen of this town, and a true friend to your family. The last, in particular, I should think I proved to you not very long ago. I, therefore, of all others, may well speak out to you boldly and plainly; and now entreat you, by the ancient honour of your office, do not this time give way to your love of vengeance, however alluring may seem the opportunity."

"What are you dreaming of?" cried Erasmus, tearing away his hand from him. "Do I intend sitting in judgment myself on the murderer of my own son? Doctor Grenwitz will preside, in my place, over the criminal tribunal."

"--Through whose mouth he will only echo your sentence! I must pray you to take off the mask before so old and faithful an acquaintance. You wish to destroy Tausdorf. That you have more than one reason for wishing it is plain to me; that in so doing you will preserve the forms of law is no more than I expect from your prudence; but you are wrong in the main point. The criminal jurisdiction over this man does not belong to the town."

"How! Does not the emperor Wenceslaus' charter of 1384 give us full authority and power to seek, take, judge and execute, with imperial privilege, all offenders, when and in whatever place they may be found, and for whatever offences?"

"The charter applies to thieves and robbers that may be apprehended within your jurisdiction. You cannot apply it to a nobleman and officer of his imperial majesty, whom you have arrested, contrary to all right, in the Fürstentein territory, and against the decree of king Wladislaus and the Convention of forty-five."

"Tausdorf is a vagabond Bohemian and adventurer, with whom there is no occasion for using much ceremony."

"By no means, Mr. Burgomaster; I have inquired narrowly into the matter. He is a native Silesian vassal. The father was possessed and settled in the hereditary principality, and the son is about to purchase an estate in Bögendorf. This affair comes under the jurisdiction of the prince palatine."

"--That he may again do us such excellent justice as in the case of Bieler's murder?--or as in those violent assaults which the nobles, since that time, have indulged in against the citizens? No; once I have given way to the arrogance of the priest, but never again so long as I am burgomaster in Schweidnitz."

"If, then, you could hope to obtain strict justice from the lord bishop, you would leave the farther proceedings to him?"

Erasmus was about to answer at once, but again bethought himself, and said wrathfully, "You are an old fox, with whom one must not use too many words, lest you should turn them into snares. It does not become a counsellor to talk of what he would do if things stood otherwise. Enough if we know what we have to do '_rebus sic stantibus_.' We owe an account of our proceedings only to the emperor, next under God; and we will account for them when it is demanded of us, either on earth, or before the Eternal judgment-seat."

"You have spoken a word of deep import, Mr. Burgomaster: God grant that you may be able one day to stand by it. I would only once again impress this upon you; Tausdorf is universally beloved; all will take part with him and against you; and if you were as right in your proceeding, as, by Heavens! you are wrong, you would still plunge this town into unutterable grief and ruin."

"_Fiat justitia et pereat mundus!_" cried the burgomaster, and left him.

* * * * *

The first gray of morning contended strangely with the yellow light of the candles in the room wherein the judges had assembled to hold a criminal court. The city serjeant was just leading out Martin Heubert, Tausdorf's boy, whom they had been interrogating, and the town-advocate, Kernicher, entered with Melchior Lange and Paul Reimann, who had been viewing the wounds of the body. The advocate laid before the chief-judge, in silence, the book in which was entered the result of his inquiry. Behind him came Tausdorf in chains, surrounded by gens-d'armes; his face was pale, and his clothes soiled and torn by the violence at Saltzbrunn, but still he bore himself with knightly dignity. The procurator arose and lifted up the accusation of blood against him; and he was summoned once--and again twice--after the ancient custom. Upon this the examination began, and Tausdorf related the unfortunate affair frankly and honestly as it had really happened.

"Francis Friend," he said in conclusion, "enticed me to the place where the misfortune occurred, reviled me, and at last fell upon me with his naked sword. Hereupon I defended myself as a soldier, to save my honour, my body, my life,--and that which then happened I was forced to do. I understand not the law, and therefore be not precipitate, but allow me an advocate to conduct my cause: I will reward him richly."

The chief judge rang his bell. "The procurator, Hans Reimann!" he exclaimed to the serjeant who answered the summons. The latter went out, and the procurator appeared.

"We have given you to the accused as his defender," said the judge. "Consult with him."

"Your pardon, gentlemen," replied the procurator; "I have no inclination for the task. Francis Friend was always on a good footing with me: and besides, I should not like to plead for a manifest assassin."

"The council will be hardly satisfied with this. Such defence belongs to your office, and you cannot refuse it without giving up the office itself. But come with me to the gentlemen of the council; you may have their answer from themselves."

He went away with the procurator. The silence of expectation prevailed through the room. Tausdorf went to the window, leaned upon the breast-work, and, gazing upon the dark gray clouds, which had already received golden edges from the rising sun, he sighed "Althea!"

At last the two returned.

"You submit, then?" said the judge to the procurator, as they retired.

"What one must, one must!" replied the procurator.

Tausdorf went up to him, and said with friendly dignity, "I pray you, sir, conduct my defence truly; I do not understand this matter, and will reward your labour. If the business were the ordering of a battle, I should know better what I was about."

"Say on, then," replied the procurator, gaping: "how am I to defend you?"

"In God's name!" cried Tausdorf angrily, "how should I, who have been devoted to arms from my youth, teach you what you are to say for me before the tribunal? The little Latin which I learnt at Gitschin is of no use here. But you are a studied man, well informed in the law, and must best know what will conduce to my advantage."

"It will all be of no use," muttered the procurator; "but relate the tale to me circumstantially, that I may thoroughly comprehend it."

Again poor Tausdorf undertook the sad labour of narrating the tale of blood. The procurator listened to him, gaping, and then briefly repeated what he had heard to the tribunal, concluding with, "You have now heard Tausdorf's statement of the affair, gentlemen, and I submit it to your decision."

"Is that your whole defence?" cried the knight indignantly, while this statement was being protocolled. "May our Saviour one day speak for your sins before the judgment-seat of God, as you have spoken for me in this hour before the tribunal of man!"

"Have you any thing else to advance?" said the judge to the accused and his defender; and as they were silent, he rang the bell, saying, "The audit is closed.--Let the knight be conveyed back again to the Hildebrand," he added to the serjeant, who then entered.

"Gentlemen," said Tausdorf, with manly firmness, "I do not believe that you have a right to pronounce judgment on me; but if you do hold yourselves so empowered, I warn you honestly, when you give your votes, to keep your conscience and your dying hour before your eyes. It is an easy thing for you to slay me, for I am in your power; but innocent blood cries with a thousand voices to Heaven, and God is just."

He went away with his guard, followed by his model of a defender, and the judges laid their heads together in anxious whisperings.

* * * * *

In the meantime the day had fully broken, and a bright July sun shone upon the overwatched faces of the council, who were still collected in the Sessions'-chamber, and had reclined themselves against the windows to prevent their going to sleep. The iron old Erasmus alone sat at the green table with bright wakeful eyes, and played with the golden medal appended to his chain of honour. By his side stood the vice-consul, Christopher Drescher, behind a chair, which he rocked to and fro impatiently.

"The judges must have come to a decision by this time," said Erasmus, as if to himself.

"If they only come to a right one," replied Drescher emphatically.

"No fear of that; although parties may at times run high amongst ourselves, yet against the outward enemy we all stand as one man; and if----Then we are at the goal, brother."

"I only wish you had not forced poor Reimann to defend him. If he should happen to bring forward things which we can't answer?"

"Some defender Tausdorf could not but have; the forms of the law demanded so much, and to forms we must strictly adhere on this occasion. Between ourselves, too, could you in all Schweidnitz have hunted out a worse advocate than this Reimann?"

"You have seen farther than I have," cried the vice-consul, after a pause: "_Concedo_."

A servant now brought in a letter to the burgomaster, which he opened and read--

"An _Intercessionale_ in favour of the prisoner by the Herr von Schindel, resident of this place, and now laid up with the gout," said Erasmus to the council. "The petitioner presumes to defend the accused, uncalled for, and to impugn the competency of our tribunal. _Ad acta!_"

"The Frau von Netz, too, waits below in great trouble," added the servitor, "and implores, in Heaven's name, a secret audience of your excellency."

"The proud nobles can now stoop themselves to entreaties," exclaimed the burgomaster triumphantly; "but it's all of no use."

He went out. The poor Althea stood there, her face in a veil wet with tears, and she approached him with clasped and uplifted hands.

"Will it please you to walk in?" asked Erasmus with cold politeness, and opened the door of the little audience-chamber.

She tottered after him. He placed a chair f motioned to her to sit down, and placed himself opposite.

"What is your pleasure, noble lady?" he asked, after a short time, during which she was unable to speak from sobbing. "Our time is peculiarly valuable to-day."

"Mercy!" at length cried the poor petitioner in the most moving tones of anguish; "Mercy for my intended husband!"

"That is with God!" replied Erasmus. "In my weighty office I recognize but the duty of justice. If such a crime were to remain unpunished, I should have to account hereafter to the Highest for the innocent victims, which might in future be sacrificed to the arrogance of the nobles."

"I do not pray for the absolution of the unfortunate one; I only pray that the business may be brought before the bishop or the emperor, and I offer to be his security till then with my whole property."

"The murder has been committed within our jurisdiction, and must be punished by our tribunal."

"And do you call it a murder that Tausdorf, to defend his own life, slew your son against his will?"

"It is not for us two to decide upon this point, Frau von Netz; for I am the father of the murdered, and you are the intended of the murderer. The judges will settle it upon their oaths."

"Mr. Burgomaster, we are alone; I would not--by Heavens I would not, offend you; but the terrors of death give me courage for the question; can money save Tausdorf? My uncle, von Schindel, is rich; we have friends amongst the nobles of the country. Fix the sum."

"If you were not a woman," exclaimed the burgomaster furiously; "if you were not a woman, you should fare ill with this twofold insult,--to the dignity of my office, and to my heart as a father. Gold for blood! That is one of the maxims of you nobles, when the question, is of a citizen's life. But the Polish times are over, when the high-born murderer had only to fling the price of blood upon the corse of the murdered, and thus remain free from all retribution. When the nobleman of Siegwitz shot the citizen's daughter, his drinking companions thought that such a girl might well be paid for; but the council there did not think so, and the head of the assassin fell."

"Oh my heart!" sighed Althea, and stood for a time struck with grief and horror at these words of wrath; then on a sudden, collecting her spirits, she flung herself before the burgomaster and embraced his knees.

"Mercy!" she cried, and lifted up her beautiful blue eyes to the inexorable one with so much fervour, that in spite of his iron resolution an unpleasant feeling oppressed his heart, and he was leaning down to her with pity, when the marshal entered to announce that the judges had presented themselves to the council and waited for the worshipful burgomaster. At this the old evil spirit returned in him. He started up with vehemence, and sought to disengage Althea's hands from his knees.

"For Heaven's sake, what will you do?" cried the unhappy victim.

"My duty!" replied the man of the stony heart, and walked away with firm and echoing steps.

The sufferer breathed a deep and piercing sigh, as if in that moment the tender thread of her life was broken, and her head fell in a kind swoon upon the seat of the chair before which she had been kneeling.

* * * * *

The criminal court had laid its sentence before the council. Its adoption and immediate execution were unanimously resolved upon, the judges were again collected in their sessions' chamber, and the pale, fettered Tausdorf stood before them with his guard, while the chief of the court read thus:--

"As the noble and honourable Kaspar Sparrenberger, surnamed Tausdorf, hath stabbed, and thus brought from life to death the in like manner noble and honourable Francis Friend,--and as this deed is open and manifest,--and he himself cannot, and does not, deny it,--therefore the imperial town-court of Schweidnitz adjudges that Tausdorf, notwithstanding his defence, has forfeited his life for such murder, and consequently, according to the law and custom of the land, shall be executed with the sword."

With this the provost took up a white-peeled willow wand which lay before him on the table, broke it in two, and throwing the pieces at the feet of the condemned, cried,

"The sentence is spoken, The staff is broken."

"You must die, and the Lord have mercy on your soul!" exclaimed the provosts, and overturned their seats with a heavy clatter.

"I appeal from this unjust sentence to the prince palatine of Silesia and the emperor," cried Tausdorf in a loud voice unshaken by this horrid ceremony.

"Such appeal cannot be made according to our privileges and customs," replied the chief provost. "The execution follows here upon the heels of the sentence."

"Then I appeal to the tribunal of God," said Tausdorf, without losing his presence of mind--"to the tribunal of God, before which we must one day all meet again. When am I to die?"

"In two hours."

"You are very quick, you gentlemen of Schweidnitz. But I suppose I may see my bride again?"

"The council has forbidden it, as well on account of the loss of time connected with it as of the unavoidable lamentation and disturbance."

"Ay, indeed! You gentlemen have true hangmen's hearts, with room therein for barbarity as well as injustice. Yet I hope the time will be just sufficient to prepare me fittingly for my departure. I wish to confess first, and receive the holy sacrament. Have the goodness to send me a priest of my persuasion, and afterwards a notary to draw up my last will."

"Both shall be done," replied the provost, and made a sign to the city-marshal, who went out.

"Moreover I was put into a bad plight in my arrest at Salzbrunn by your runners, and their rabble," continued Tausdorf, surveying his person indignantly; "and it is not fitting that a knight should die publicly in so unworthy a state, as a mockery to your people; therefore send to the Frau von Netz, that she may forward to me my red velvet suit of ceremony for my last travel."

"It shall be done according to your desire," said the chief provost, confounded by the proud calmness of the condemned.

"The chaplain is ready for you below, Herr von Tausdorf, in my little room below the custom-house," announced the city-marshal.

"Then I must first reconcile myself with my enemies according to the duty of a Christian. I pray you, therefore, gentlemen, to forgive me for having through my unlucky deed given you occasion for the sin of injustice. On my part I willingly and freely pardon you my death. God favour you with an early repentance! May my blood be the last which shall flow in this unhappy feud betwixt the nobility and citizens."

He departed with the city-marshal; the gens-d'armes followed. The provosts looked at each other sadly troubled, and from the provost-chief escaped the exclamation, "The business will not be over with the head that is to fall here. Heaven turn all to the best!"

* * * * *

The burgomaster had for a short time betaken himself to his house to give orders for the burial of his son. He had just dismissed the church-servants, and looked from the bow-window of his audience-chamber with silent anguish on the black-mantled undertakers who were carrying out Francis's coffin to the customhouse, where the body still lay, when doctor Heidenreich came in unsummoned. Erasmus received him with angry exclamations.

"So, you will not cease to torment me? I thought that the contested point had been sufficiently discussed between us last night; as to any change, that is past all question now, since the sentence has been pronounced."

"I know it," said Heidenreich, troubled. "You have condemned Tausdorf to the sword!"

"Not I," interrupted Erasmus vehemently; "but the provost's court at Schweidnitz. The council has, indeed, approved the sentence; but in regard to that personal interest which I take in the affair, I did not even deem it proper to subscribe my name."

"I neither ask of you generosity nor favour. But I demand justice of you for your own sake; you are on the point of committing a crying act of injustice, and of thereby rending the honourable garland that a long active life has wound about your brows. Your sentence is not only against all equity, but against the laws."

"Against the laws? Mr. Doctor, put a guard upon your tongue, that it may not bring your body into trouble."

"I have heard the murderous story from Tausdorf's servant. Your son was killed by the accused in his just defence. Does not the penal code of Charles the Fifth expressly state, that if any one falls upon, assaults, or strikes another with deadly weapons, and the person so attacked cannot escape without risk and jeopardy to his body, life, honour, or good report, he may then peril life and limb in his just defence without incurring any punishment--and if, moreover, he kills the aggressor, he is not to be, therefore, deemed guilty, nor is he bound to delay with his defence till he is struck, although otherwise against written laws and usages?"

"You have long been known to me as a shrewd advocate," answered Erasmus with mockery; "but the _Carolina_[3] has not yet been formally published to us, and above all things the act of self-defence should have been proved. The mouth of my poor son is shut, the declaration of the accused and of his servant proves nothing."

"There was also a page of Tausdorf's present; and a woman saw the battle from the garden-wall. In the testimony of three witnesses consists truth."

"The witnesses of whom you speak," replied the burgomaster, confused, "did not present themselves for examination. It was, besides, for the judges to decide whether their examination was requisite."

"But I think, Mr. Burgomaster, it was for your own honour to seek out these witnesses, and to defer the execution of the sentence till then, that it might not be said you wished to destroy the accused from a wretched spirit of revenge."

"I am weary of your insolence; instantly take yourself out of my four walls, Mr. Doctor, or I shall give you lodgings in the Hildebrand as a malcontent and fomenter of discord; they are just now vacant."

"You thrust your better angel from your side," replied Heidenreich sadly. "I have not spoken out of favour to the accused, whom I do not know, but from old friendship to yourself. You will not listen to me, and I wash my hands in innocence. But I tell you a day will come when you will think of my words and of this hour with repentance, alas, too late!"

He left the room. Erasmus went to the window to cool the angry glow upon his face in the fresh air, when he saw the gouty Schindel, who was being carried in a chair by servants towards the burgomaster's house.

"Nothing was wanting but the old gossip with his tedious conciliatory efforts," exclaimed Erasmus, and running out he gave the servant strict orders to show the door to Schindel.