“The elector, merrily putting his arm into mine, with the intention of leading me from the spot, said: ‘Good! the prophecy turns out to be a mere common-place trick, not worth the time and money which it has cost us.’ But how great was our astonishment, when, at the very time he was speaking these words, a cry was raised, and all eyes were turned towards a great butcher’s dog which came running from the castle-court, and which, having seized the roebuck in the kitchen, as good spoil, had borne it off by the nape of the neck, and now dropped it about three paces from us, followed by a troop of servants, male and female. Thus was the woman’s prophecy, which she had uttered as a guarantee for all the rest that she predicted, completely fulfilled, as the roebuck had indeed met us in the marketplace, although it was dead. The lightning which falls from heaven on a winter’s day, cannot strike with more annihilating effect than that which this sight produced on me; and my first attempt, after I had freed myself from the persons about me, was to find out the man with the plumed hat, whom the woman had designated; but although my people were employed for three days uninterruptedly, in seeking information, not one of them was in a condition to give me the slightest intelligence on the subject. Now, friend Conrad, a few weeks ago, in the farm at Dahme, I saw the man with my own eyes.” Having finished this narrative, the elector let the chamberlain’s hand fall, and sank back on his couch, wiping off the perspiration. The chamberlain, who thought every attempt to oppose or correct the elector’s view of the case would be fruitless, entreated him to try some plan to obtain possession of the slip, and then to leave the fellow to his fate; but the elector replied, that he could see no plan at all, although the thought of going without the paper, and of seeing all knowledge of it perish with Kohlhaas, made him almost desperate. To his friend’s question, whether he had made any efforts to discover the gipsy herself, he answered that the government (_Gubernium_), in pursuance of a command which he had sent forth under a false pretext, had in vain sought for the woman to that day, in all the public places in the electorate, while, from other reasons which he declined to communicate more explicitly, he expressed his doubts whether she was to be found in Saxony. It chanced that the chamberlain wished to travel to Berlin for the sake of some considerable property in the Neumark, to which his wife had become entitled by the bequest of the High Chancellor Kallheim, who died soon after he was displaced; and, therefore, as he really was much attached to the elector, he asked him, after a short deliberation, whether he would let him act quite at liberty in this matter.