t part of my jaw.
"Schottendorf was our governor and tyrant; a man who repaid the
friendship he found in the mansion of my fathers--with cruelty. He
was ripe for the sickle, and Time cut him off. Tormentini and Galer
were his successors in office, by them we were carefully watched, but
we were treated with commiseration. Their precautions rendered
imprisonment less wretched. Ever shall I hold their memory sacred.
Yet, benevolent as they were, their goodness was exceeded by that of
Rottensteiner, the head gaoler. He considered his prisoners as his
children; and he was their benefactor. Of this I had experience,
during two years after the release of Hallasch.
"Here I but cursorily describe misery, at which the monarch shall
shudder, if the blood of a tyrant flow not in his veins. Theresa
could not wish these things. But she was fallible, and not
omniscient.
"From the above narrative, you will perceive how opposite the effects
must be which the histories of Baron Trenck and of myself must
produce.
"Trenck left his dungeon shielded from contempt; the day of freedom
was the day of triumph. I, on the contrary, was exposed to every
calamity. The spirit of Trenck again raised itself. I have laboured
many a night that I might neither beg nor perish the following day:
working for judges who neither knew law nor had powers of mind to
behold the beauty of justice: settling accounts that, item after item,
did not prove that the lord they were intended for, was an imbecile
dupe.
"Trenck remembers his calamities, but the remembrance is advantageous
to himself and his family; while with me, the past did but increase,
did but agonise, the present and the future. He was not like me,
obliged to crouch in presence of those vulgar, those incapable minds,
that do but consider the bent back as the footstool of pride. Every
man is too busy to act in behalf of others; pity me therefore, but
advise me not to hope assistance, by petitioning princes at second
hand. I know your good wishes, and, for these, I have nothing to
return but barren thanks.--I am, &c."
The reasons why I published the foregoing letters are already stated, and
will appear satisfactory to the reader. Once more to affairs that
concern myself.
I met at Berlin many old friends of both sexes; among others, an aged
invalid came to see me, who was at
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