“Ah, your worship,” said Kohlhaas, detaching it from his neck, opening it, and taking out a little slip of paper fastened with a wafer, “there is something very peculiar about this case. It is about seven months ago, on the very day after my wife’s burial, when I had set out from Kohlhaasenbrück, as perhaps you know, to seize the person of Squire von Tronka, who had done me much wrong, that for some negotiation, unknown to me, the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg had a meeting in Jüterboch, a market town, through which my way led me. When they had settled every thing according to their wishes, they went through the streets of the town, conversing in a friendly manner, that they might see the fair, which was held with due merriment. Presently they came to a gipsy woman, who sat upon a stool, and uttered prophesies to the people who surrounded her, out of an almanack. “This woman they asked, jestingly, whether she had any thing pleasant to tell them. I, who had put up at an inn, with all my band, and chanced to be present at the spot when this occurrence took place, standing at the entrance to the church, could not hear, through the crowd, what the strange woman said to the electors. When the people whispered, laughingly, in each other’s ears, that she would not communicate her science to any body, and crowded thickly together on account of the spectacle that was preparing, I got upon a bench, which had been hewn out in the entrance to the church, not so much because I was curious myself, as because I would make way for those that were. Scarcely had I, from this elevation, taken a full survey of the electors and the woman, who sat before them on the stool, and seemed to be scribbling something, than she suddenly raised herself on her crutches, and, looking round the people, fixed her eyes upon me, who had not spoken a single word to her, and had never cared for such sciences in my life. “Pressing towards me, through the dense crowd, she said: ‘Ah, if the gentleman wishes to know, he had better ask you.’ Then, your worship, with her dry, bony hands she gave me this slip. All the people turned round to me, and I said, perfectly astonished, ‘Why, mother--what sort of a present is this?’ After all sorts of unintelligible stuff, among which, to my great surprise, I heard my own name, she replied, ‘It is an amulet, thou horse-dealer, Kohlhaas, keep it well, it will one day save thy life.’ And so saying, she vanished. Now!” continued Kohlhaas, good humouredly, “to tell the truth, sharply as matters have been going on in Dresden, they have not cost me my life; and as for Berlin, the future will show me how I get on there, and whether I shall come off well.”