ve been sought for, and best
known, there was I least valued.

No man, in my youth, would have believed I should live to my sixtieth
year, untitled and obscure. In Berlin, Petersburg, London, and Paris,
have I been esteemed by the greatest statesmen, and now am I reduced to
the invalid list. How strange are the caprices of fortune! I ought
never to have left Russia: this was my great error, which I still live to
repent.

I have never been accustomed to sleep more than four or five hours, so
that through life I have allowed time for paying visits and receiving
company. I have still had sufficient for study and improvement. Hyndford
was my instructor in politics; Boerhaave, then physician to the court, my
bosom friend, my tutor in physic and literary subjects. Women formed me
for court intrigues, though these, as a philosopher, I despised.

The chancellor had greatly changed his carriage towards me since the
incident of the plan. He observed my looks, showed he was distrustful,
and desirous of revenge. His lady, as well as myself, remarked this, and
new measures became necessary. I was obliged to act an artful, but, at
the same time, a very dangerous part.

My cousin, Baron Trenck, died in the Spielberg, October 4, 1749, and left
me his heir, on condition I should only serve the house of Austria. In
March, 1750, Count Bernes received the citation sent me to enter on this
inheritance. I would hear nothing of Vienna; the abominable treatment of
my cousin terrified me. I well knew the origin of his prosecution, the
services he had rendered his country, and had been an eye-witness of the
injustice by which he was repaid. Bernes represented to me that the
property left me was worth much above a million: that the empress would
support me in pursuit of justice, and that I had no personal enemy at
Vienna, that a million of certain property in Hungary was much superior
to the highest expectations in Russia, where I myself had beheld so many
changes of fortune, and the effects of family cabals. Russia he painted
as dangerous, Vienna as secure, and promised me himself effectual
assistance, as his embassy would end within the year. Were I once rich,
I might reside in what country I pleased; nor could the persecutions of
Frederic anywhere pursue me so ineffectually as in Austria. Snares would
be laid for me everywhere else, as I had experienced in Russia. "What,"
said he, "would have been the consequence, had not t