mitted to walk on the ramparts.

I did not want money, and there was only a detachment from the garrison
regiment in the citadel of Glatz, the officers of which were all poor. I
soon had both friends and freedom, and the rich prisoner every day kept
open table.

He only who had known me in this the ardour of my youth, who had
witnessed how high I aspired, and the fortune that attended me at Berlin,
can imagine what my feelings were at finding myself thus suddenly cast
from my high hopes.

I wrote submissively to the King, requesting to be tried by a
court-martial, and not desiring any favour should I be found guilty. This
haughty tone, in a youth, was displeasing, and I received no answer,
which threw me into despair, and induced me to use every possible means
to obtain my liberty.

My first care was to establish, by the intervention of an officer, a
certain correspondence with the object of my heart. She answered, she
was far from supposing I had ever entertained the least thought
treacherous to my country; that she knew, too well, I was perfectly
incapable, of dissimulation. She blamed the precipitate anger and unjust
suspicions of the King; promised me speedy aid, and sent me a thousand
ducats.

Had I, at this critical moment, possessed a prudent and intelligent
friend, who could have calmed my impatience, nothing perhaps might have
been more easy than to have obtained pardon from the King, by proving my
innocence; or, it may be, than to have induced him to punish my enemies.

But the officers who then were at Glatz fed the flame of discontent. They
supposed the money I so freely distributed came all from Hungary,
furnished by the pandour chest; and advised me not to suffer my freedom
to depend upon the will of the King, but to enjoy it in his despite.

It was not more easy to give this advice than to persuade a man to take
it, who, till then, had never encountered anything but good fortune, and
who consequently supported the reverse with impatience. I was not yet,
however, determined; because I could not yet resolve to abandon my
country, and especially Berlin.

Five months soon passed away in prison: peace was concluded; the King was
returned to his capital; my commission in the guards was bestowed on
another, when Lieutenant Piaschky, of the regiment of Fouquet, and Ensign
Reitz, who often mounted guard over me, proposed that they and I should
escape together. I yielded; our plan was fixed, and eve