He threw on the disguise of a Thuringian farmer and told Sternbald that a matter of the greatest importance obliged him to go to Wittenberg.  In the presence of some of his most trustworthy men he turned over to Sternbald the command of the band remaining in Luetzen, and with the assurance that he would be back in three days, during which time no attack was to be feared, he departed for Wittenberg.  He put up at an inn under an assumed name, and at nightfall, wrapped in his cloak and provided with a brace of pistols which he had taken at the sack of Tronka Castle, entered Luther’s room.  When Luther, who was sitting at his desk with a mass of books and papers before him, saw the extraordinary stranger enter his room and bolt the door behind him, he asked who he was and what he wanted.  The man, who was holding his hat respectfully in his hand, had no sooner, with a diffident presentiment of the terror that he would cause, made answer that he was Michael Kohlhaas, the horse-dealer, than Luther cried out, “Stand far back from me!” and rising from the desk added, as he hurried toward a bell, “Your breath is pestilence, your presence destruction!”

Without stirring from the spot Kohlhaas drew his pistol and said, “Most reverend Sir, if you touch the bell this pistol will stretch me lifeless at your feet!  Sit down and hear me.  You are not safer among the angels, whose psalms you are writing down, than you are with me.”

Luther sat down and asked, “What do you want?” Kohlhaas answered, “I wish to refute the opinion you have of me, that I am an unjust man!  You told me in your placard that my sovereign knows nothing about my case.  Very well; procure me a safe-conduct and I will go to Dresden and lay it before him.”

“Impious and terrible man!” cried Luther, puzzled and, at the same time, reassured by these words.  “Who gave you the right to attack Squire Tronka in pursuance of a decree issued on your own authority, and, when you did not find him in his castle, to visit with fire and sword the whole community which protects him?”

Kohlhaas answered, “Reverend Sir, no one, henceforth.  Information which I received from Dresden deceived and misled me!  The war which I am waging against society is a crime, so long as I haven’t been cast out—­and you have assured me that I have not.”

“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.”