The horse-dealer remarked a singular likeness between this woman and his deceased wife Lisbeth: indeed he could almost have asked her if she were not her grandmother; for not only did her features, her hands, which, bony as they were, were still beautiful, and especially the use which she made of these while talking, remind him of Lisbeth most forcibly, but even a mole by which his wife’s neck was marked, was on the gipsy’s neck also. Hence, amid strangely conflicting thoughts, he compelled her to take a seat, and asked her what possible business of the chamberlain’s could bring her to him. The woman, while Kohlhaas’s old dog went sniffing about her knees, and wagged his tail while she patted him, announced that the commission which the chamberlain had given her, was to tell him how the paper contained a mysterious answer to three questions of the utmost importance to the Saxon court, to warn him against an emissary who was at Berlin, with the design of taking it, and to ask for the paper herself, under the pretext that it was no more safe in his own bosom. The real design of her coming was, however, to tell him that the threat of depriving him of the paper, by force or cunning, was completely idle, that he had not the least cause to feel any apprehension about it, under the protection of the Elector of Brandenburg--nay, that the paper was much safer with him than with her, and that he should take great care not to lose it, by delivering it to any one under any pretext whatever. However, she added by saying, that she thought it prudent to use the paper for the purpose for which she had given it to him at the Jüterboch fair, to listen to the offer which had been made to him on the borders by the page, von Stein, and to give the paper, which could be of no further use to him, to the Elector of Saxony, in exchange for life and liberty. Kohlhaas, who exulted in the power which was given him, of mortally wounding his enemy’s heel, at the very moment when it trampled him in the dust, replied, “Not for the world, good mother; not for the world!” and pressing the old woman’s hand, only desired to know, what were the answers to the important questions contained in the paper. The woman, taking in her lap the youngest child, who was crouching down at her feet, said, “No--not for the world, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer; but for the sake of this pretty little fair-haired boy.” So saying, she smiled at him, embraced him, and kissed him; while he stared at her with all his might, and gave him with her dry hands an apple, which she carried in her pocket.