wandered about miserably, pursued everywhere by the vengeance of Frederick, and being obliged sometimes to resist sword in hand persons sent in pursuit of him. Proscribed in his own country, he had taken service with Austria. At length, after a series of adventures, of which he gives an account in his “Memoirs” that bears all the impress of sincerity, notwithstanding the extraordinary events to which it refers, he found himself at Dantzic, where he was delivered up to the King of Prussia by the treachery of the imperial resident and the authorities of the city. He was then taken to Magdeburg, and imprisoned in the citadel.
“My dungeon,” he says, “was in a casemate, the fore part of which, six feet wide and ten feet long, was divided by a party wall. In the inner wall were two doors, and a third at the entrance of the casemate itself. The window in the outer wall, which was seven feet thick, was so situated, that though I had light, I could see neither heaven nor earth, but only the roof of the magazine within, and outside this window were iron bars, and in the space between, an iron grating, so narrow and with such small interstices that it was impossible I should see any person without the prison or that any person should see me. On the outside was a wooden palisado six feet from the wall, by which the sentinels were prevented conveying anything to me. I had a mattress, and a bedstead, fastened to the floor by iron cramps so firmly that it was impossible to move it up to the window. Beside the door was a small iron stove and a table, in like manner fixed to the floor. I was not yet put in irons, and my allowance was a pound and a half per day of ammunition bread, and a jug of water. From my youth I always had a good appetite, and my bread was so mouldy I could at first scarcely eat the half of it. This was one result of the commandant’s avarice, who endeavoured to profit even by the food supplies of the unfortunate prisoners. It is impossible for me to describe to my reader the excess of tortures that during eleven months I endured from ravenous hunger. I could easily have devoured six pounds of bread every day; and every twenty-four hours, after having received and swallowed my small portion I continued as hungry as before I began, yet I was obliged to wait another twenty-four hours for a new morsel. How willingly would I have signed a bill of exchange for a thousand ducats, on my property at Vienna, only to have satiated my hunger on dry bread. Scarcely had I dropped into a sweet sleep before I dreamed I was feasting at some table, luxuriously loaded, where the whole company were astonished to see me, eating like a glutton, to such an extent was my imagination heated by the sensation of famine.