able companion. We are taught that a noble
aspect bespeaks a corresponding mind; this I believe him to possess.
But what expectations can I form from Baron Trenck?

"I will briefly answer the questions you have put. Baron Trenck was a
man born to inherit great estates; this and the fire of his youth,
fanned by flattering hopes from his famous kinsman, rendered him too
haughty to his King; and this alone was the origin of all his future
sufferings. I, on the contrary, though the son of a Silesian nobleman
of property, did not inherit so much as the pay of a common soldier;
the family having been robbed by the hand of power, after being
accused by wickedness under the mask of virtue. You know my father's
fate, the esteem in which he was held by the Empress Theresa; and that
a pretended miracle was the occasion of his fall. Suddenly was he
plunged from the height to which industry, talents, and virtue had
raised him, to the depth of poverty. At length, at the beginning of
the seven years' war, one of the King of Prussia's subjects
represented him to the Austrian court as a dangerous correspondent of
Marshal Schwerin's. Then at sixty years of age, my father was seized
at Jagerndorf, and imprisoned in the fortress of Gratz, in Styria. He
had an allowance just sufficient to keep him alive in his dungeon;
but, for the space of seven years, never beheld the sun rise or set. I
was a boy when this happened, however, I was not heard. I only
received some pecuniary relief from the Empress, with permission to
shed my blood in her defence. In this situation we first vowed
eternal friendship; but from this I soon was snatched by my father's
enemies. What the Empress had bestowed, her ministers tore from me. I
was seized at midnight, and was brought, in company with two other
officers, to the fortress of Gratz. Here I remained immured six
years. My true name was concealed, and another given me.

"Peace being restored, Trenck, I, and my father were released; but the
mode of our release was very different. The first obtained his
freedom at the intercession of Theresa, she, too, afforded him a
provision. We, on the contrary, according to the amnesty, stipulated
in the treaty of peace, were led from our dungeons as state prisoners,
without inquiry concerning the verity or falsehood of our crimes.
Extreme poverty, wretch