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.

As soon as the mound had been raised, the cross planted on it, and the guests who had been present at the interment had taken their departure, Kohlhaas flung himself down once more before his wife’s empty bed, and then set about the business of revenge.

He sat down and made out a decree in which, by virtue of his own innate authority, he condemned the Squire Wenzel Tronka within the space of three days after sight to lead back to Kohlhaasenbrueck the two black horses which he had taken from him and over-worked in the fields, and with his own hands to feed the horses in Kohlhaas’ stables until they were fat again.  This decree he sent off to the Squire by a mounted messenger, and instructed the latter to return to Kohlhaasenbrueck as soon as he had delivered the document.