At midnight we halted in a walled town, the name of which my guards concealed from me,[21] and I was so well watched that I could not ask the question, immaterial as it was, of anybody else. I, however, was civilly informed that I might go to bed here for two hours, and I as civilly or satirically replied, “That a bed was no comfort to a man encumbered with heavy chains and a ponderous padlock.” If I were rational in nothing else, I was deemed rational in this; and accordingly I was unpadlocked, unchained, and unmanacled, and allowed to go to bed; but so dangerous a character was I thought, that two police officers, in addition to my two guards, were stationed in my chamber to keep watch over me whilst I slumbered or lay in bed, seating themselves one on each side of it. I need scarcely observe that I could not sleep. If an eye were closed that night, it must have been in the head of one of my guards or in that of one of their assistants.
The time elapsed, and glad was I at the coming of the cold, damp dawn. I was again chained, and we were placed in another vehicle, and I discovered they were taking a more northerly direction towards Strasbourg. We had three relays before four in the afternoon, when we arrived at Tütlingen, a small open town in Würtemberg,[22] and stopped, as usual, at the post-house, which was also a tavern. We found a number of very genteel people there. I attracted, of course, the notice of everybody; they appeared desirous and anxious to serve me, and reprobated very much the conduct of the Bavarians for using a British officer with such cruelty. I was in great hopes of staying here all night, as there was at first a difficulty in procuring a carriage. However, the Bavarians did not deem this prudent, and they got a common waggon, which was filled with straw, and placed me in the centre between them. They were not wrong in doing so, for had I remained there that night I certainly should have been rescued.
At midnight we changed our waggon at Rothweil. At dawn we again changed; and at four in the afternoon we passed through Gegenbach; and about midnight arrived at Offenburg, a fortified town in Baden, and only five or six leagues from Strasbourg. Here we went to bed, my guards having first placed their bedsteads on each side of mine.
My mind was too much occupied with the misery that awaited me to admit of sleep. The dungeons, in which I was perhaps inevitably doomed to drag out a miserable existence, appeared to my imagination with all their horrors. Bitche was the place that had been originally allotted for me, and I was of opinion, from the different accounts that I had received of this wretched place, that a prisoner’s life was prolonged, only to make his punishment the greater. My depression of spirits became extreme; and even my guards greatly commiserated my distress, and frequently expressed their regret at its being their lot to deliver me again into the hands of my enemies.
In justice to these, my conductors, I must say that they used their authority with as much mercy as possible. They anticipated as well as they could all my wants; and, in fact, in every respect they made me as comfortable as possible under our relative circumstances and positions. When I reflect on these and many similar facts, and, above all, when I reflect on the kind old wife of the gaoler of Lindau, I am bound to say that I found the Germans generally honest and kind-hearted, and the females of that country particularly so.
At eight the next morning we quitted Offenburg for Strasbourg, and at eleven we breakfasted at Kehl. This was our last stage, and here we procured our last change of horses. We crossed the bridge at one, and were most strictly searched by custom-house officers. All they found upon me was the heavy chains and the as heavy padlock. Would to heavens they had deemed those contraband goods, and had deprived me of them! These fellows, as well as the sentries, were enraged when I told them that they had not been so very particular a few mornings before, when I had passed the bridge without their deigning to speak to me. I put the latter into a most furious passion when I quizzed them upon their muffling themselves up in their warm cloaks, and keeping themselves in their sentry-boxes, whilst I was slipping by them amidst the cattle. How mad they were!—but the joke now was all against myself, for in half-an-hour I found myself securely lodged in the military gaol of Strasbourg. Thus ended all my hopes.
The keeper of this prison was, thank God, excessively civil and kind; and civility and kindness are by no means common qualities amongst the gaolers of this most civilised and polite nation. He showed me into an apartment where there was a tolerably good bed, and even asked me if I wished to have a fire. A good fire in a damp room of a gaol, on a bitterly frosty day of December, was certainly a great addition to a poor prisoner’s comforts, and I frankly replied that there was nothing, under his roof at least, that I should like so much to see as a blazing hearth; but I as honestly added that I had not one farthing to pay for it. The little money that I had possessed had been almost all spent by the Bavarians in getting me a shirt and a pair of stockings, and I saw them give the remainder, which was a mere trifle, to the French gendarmes when they handed me over to their custody. “In that case,” replied the feeling gaoler, “you shall go to my apartment and warm yourself, and you shall want for nothing that I can help you to.” This was a very different reception from what I had anticipated. It is astonishing what an effect kindness has upon the heart, and especially upon the heart of the afflicted and miserable. This man’s charity quite disarmed me from any thoughts of escape. Nothing could have induced me, by any misconduct, to have brought so good a man under rebuke or punishment from the authorities above him.
Shivering with cold, I left my dark, damp room, and soon found myself in a very comfortable apartment, and my eyes were greeted with the sight of a blazing fire, whilst the crackling of the burning logs “discoursed sweet music to my ears.”
My frank and charitable Samaritan soon gave me a reason why the benevolence of his nature was now poured forth so cordially towards me. He was an old soldier, and had twice been made a prisoner by the English during the last war. He had been captured up the Mediterranean, and on both occasions the English, he said, had treated him kindly; and he conceived that he was only paying off a debt of gratitude in availing himself of an opportunity to be kind to an English officer in distress. Never was logic more conclusive to my mind, or never did a debtor and creditor account of favours received and returned sound more delightfully to my ears.
He introduced me to his wife, a German woman, who insisted on my taking a seat near the fire; and the frank, hospitable creature seemed to vie with her husband in mitigating my sufferings. After the very many hours I had been almost perishing with the cold, and cramped and numbed with my chains, I need not say how comfortable I found myself. I supped with my worthy host and hostess, and next day I breakfasted and dined at their table.