The King gave orders these cups should all be inspected by government, because I wished, by my verses and devices, to inform the world of my fate. But this command was not obeyed; the officers made merchandise of my cups, and sold them at last for twelve ducats each. Their value increased so much, when I was released from prison, that they are now to be found in various museums throughout Europe. Twelve years ago the late Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel presented one of them to my wife; and another came, in a very unaccountable manner, from the Queen-Dowager of Prussia to Paris. I have given prints of both these, with the verses they contained, in my works; whence it may be seen how artificially they were engraved.
A third fell into the hands of Prince Augustus Lobkowitz, then a prisoner of war at Magdeburg, who, on his return to Vienna, presented it to the Emperor, who placed it in his museum. Among other devices on this cup, was a landscape, representing a vineyard and husbandmen, and under it the following words:—By my labours my vineyard flourished, and I hoped to have gathered the fruit; but Ahab came. Alas! for Naboth.
The allusion was so pointed, both to the wrongs done me in Vienna, and my sufferings in Prussia, that it made a very strong impression on the Empress-Queen, who immediately commanded her minister to make every exertion for my deliverance. She would probably at last have even restored me to my estates, had not the possessors of them been so powerful, or had she herself lived one year longer. To these my engraved cups was I indebted for being once more remembered at Vienna. On the same cup, also, was another engraving of a bird in a cage, held by a Turk, with the following inscription:—The bird sings even in the storm; open his cage, break his fetters, ye friends of virtue, and his songs shall be the delight of your abodes!
There is another remarkable circumstance attending these cups. All were forbidden under pain of death to hold conversation with me, or to supply me with pen and ink; yet by this open permission of writing what I pleased on pewter, was I enabled to inform the world of all I wished, and to prove a man of merit was oppressed. The difficulties of this engraving will be conceived, when it is remembered that I worked by candle-light on shining pewter, attained the art of giving light and shade, and by practice could divide a cup into two-and-thirty compartments as regularly with a stroke of the hand as with a pair of compasses. The writing was so minute that it could only be read with glasses. I could use but one hand, both, being separated by the bar, and therefore held the cup between my knees. My sole instrument was a sharpened nail, yet did I write two lines on the rim only.
My labour became so excessive, that I was in danger of distraction or blindness. Everybody wished for cups, and I wished to oblige everybody, so that I worked eighteen hours a day. The reflection of the light from the pewter was injurious to my eyes, and the labour of invention for apposite subjects and verses was most fatiguing. I had learnt only architectural drawing.
Enough of these cups, which procured me so much honour, so many advantages, and helped to shorten so many mournful hours. My greatest encumbrance was the huge iron collar, with its enormous appendages, which, when suffered to press the arteries in the back of my neck, occasioned intolerable headaches. I sat too much, and a third time fell sick. A Brunswick sausage, secretly given me by a friend, occasioned an indigestion, which endangered my life; a putrid fever followed, and my body was reduced to a skeleton. Medicines, however, were conveyed to me by the officers, and, now and then, warm food.
After my recovery, I again thought it necessary to endeavour to regain my liberty. I had but forty louis-d’ors remaining, and these I could not get till I had first broken up the flooring.
Lieutenant Sonntag was consumptive, and obtained his discharge. I supplied bins with money to defray the expenses of his journey, and with an order that four hundred florins should be annually paid him from my effects till his death or my release. I commissioned him to seek an audience from the Empress, endeavour to excite her compassion in my behalf, and to remit me four thousand florins, for which I gave a proper acquittance, by the way of Hamburgh. The money-draft was addressed to my administrators, Counsellors Kempf and Huttner.
But no one, alas! in Vienna, wished my return; they had already begun to share my property, of which they never rendered me an account. Poor Sonntag was arrested as a spy, imprisoned, ill treated for some weeks, and, at last, when naked and destitute, received a hundred florins, and was escorted beyond the Austrian confines. The worthy man fell a shameful sacrifice to his honesty, could never obtain an audience of the Empress, and returned poor and miserable on foot to Berlin, where he was twelve months secretly maintained by his brother, and with whom he died. He wrote an account of all this to the good Knoblauch, my Hamburgh agent, and I, from my small store, sent him a hundred ducats.
How much must I despair of finding any place of refuge on earth, hearing accounts like these from Vienna.