, each other.

CHAPTER VII.

Could I have read the book of fate, and have seen the forty years'
fearful afflictions that were to follow, I certainly should not have
rejoiced at this my escape from Glatz. One year's patience might have
appeased the irritated monarch, and, taking a retrospect of all that has
passed, I now find it would have been a fortunate circumstance, had the
good and faithful Schell and I never met, since he also fell into a train
of misfortunes, which I shall hereafter relate, and from which he could
never extricate himself, but by death. The sufferings which I have since
undergone will be read with astonishment.

It is my consolation that both the laws of honour and nature justify the
action. I may serve as an example of the fortitude with which danger
ought to be encountered, and show monarchs that in Germany, as well as in
Rome, there are men who refuse to crouch beneath the yoke of despotism,
and that philosophy and resolution are stronger than even those lords of
slaves, with all their threats, whips, tortures, and instruments of
death.

In Prussia, where my sufferings might have made me supposed the worst of
traitors, is my innocence universally acknowledged; and instead of
contempt, there have I gained the love of the whole nation, which is the
best compensation for all the ills I have suffered, and for having
persevered in the virtuous principles taught me in my youth, persecuted
as I have been by envy and malicious power. I have not time further to
moralise; the numerous incidents of my life would otherwise swell this
volume to too great an extent.

Thus in freedom at Braunau, on the Bohemian frontiers, I sent the two
horses, with the corporal's sword, back to General Fouquet, at Glatz. The
letter accompanying them was so pleasing to him that all the sentinels
before my prison door, as well as the guard under arms, and all those we
passed, were obliged to run the gauntlet, although the very day before he
had himself declared my escape was now rendered impossible. He, however,
was deceived; and thus do the mean revenge themselves on the miserable,
and the tyrant on the innocent.

And now for the first time did I quit my country, and fly like Joseph
from the pit into which his false brethren had cast him; and in this the
present moment of joy for my escape, the loss even of friends and country
appeared to me the excess of good fortune.

The estates which had been purchase