ing him as they did, put every
wily art in practice to insure his destruction. I therefore, in the
fulness of my heart, made him the brotherly proposition of escaping, and,
having obtained his liberty, to prove his innocence to the Empress Queen.
I told him my plan, which might easily have been put in execution, and
which he seemed perfectly decided to follow.

Some days after, I was ordered to wait on field-marshal Count Konigseck,
governor of Vienna. This respectable old gentleman, whose memory I shall
ever revere, behaved to me like a father and the friend of humanity,
advised me to abandon my cousin, who he gave me clearly to understand had
betrayed me by having revealed my proposed plan of escape, willing to
sacrifice me to his ambition in order to justify the purity of his
intentions to the court, and show that, instead of wishing to escape, he
only desired justice.

Confounded at the cowardly action of one for whom I would willingly have
sacrificed my life, and whom I only sought to deliver, I resolved to
leave him to his fate, and thought myself exceedingly happy that the
worthy field-marshal would, after a fatherly admonition, smother all
farther inquiry into this affair.

I related this black trait of ingratitude to Prince Charles of Lorraine,
who prevailed on me to again see my cousin, without letting him know I
knew what had passed, and still to render him every service in my power.

Before I proceed I will here give the reader a per-'trait of this Trenck.

He was a man of superior talents and unbounded ambition; devoted, even
fanatically, to his sovereign; his boldness approached temerity; he was
artful of mind, wicked of heart, vindictive and unfeeling. His cupidity
equalled the utmost excess of avarice, even in his thirty-third year, in
which he died. He was too proud to receive favours or obligations from
any man, and was capable of ridding himself of his best friend if he
thought he had any claims on his gratitude or could get possession of his
fortune.

He knew I had rendered him very important services, supposed his cause
already won, having bribed the judges, who were to revise the sentence,
with thirty thousand florins, which money I received from his friend
Baron Lopresti, and conveyed to these honest counsellors. I knew all his
secrets, and nothing more was necessary to prompt his suspicious and bad
heart to seek my destruction.

Scarcely had a fortnight elapsed, after his having first