CHAPTER X. “TRENCK, ARE YOU THERE?”
Trenck slept. Sleep on, sleep on, unfortunate prisoner, for while asleep you are free and joyous; when you awake, your happy dreams will vanish; agony and despair will be your only companions.
Listen! there are steps in the passage; Trenck does not hear them—he still sleeps. But, now a key is turned, the door is opened, and Trenck springs from his pallet.
“Are you there, my friends? Is all ready?”
But he totters back with a fearful shriek, his eyes fixed despairingly upon the door. There stood Von Bruckhausen, the prison commandant, beside him several officers, behind them a crowd of soldiers.
This vision explained all to Trenck. It told him that his plan had miscarried—that again all had been in vain. It told him that he must remain what he was, a poor, wretched prisoner—more wretched than before, for they would now find out that when alone he could release himself from his chains. They would find his gold, which he had taken from its hiding-place, and was now lying loosely upon the floor.
“I am lost!” said he, covering his face with his hands, and throwing himself upon his bed.
A malignant smile brightened up Von Bruckhausen’s disagreeable countenance, as his eye took in the broken chains, the glittering gold, and the despairing prisoner. He then ordered the soldiers to raise the chains and fasten them on him.
Trenck made no resistance. He suffered them quietly to adjust his iron belt, to fasten the chain around his neck. He seemed insensible to all that was passing. This fearful blow had annihilated him; and the giant who, but a short time before, had thought to conquer the world, was now a weak, trembling, defenceless child. When he was ordered to rise to have the chains annexed to his iron girdle, and fastened to the wall, he rose at once, and stretched out his hand for the manacles. Now the commandant dared approach Trenck; he had no fear of the chained lion, he could jeer at and mock without danger. He did it with the wrath of a soul hard and pitiless; with the deep, unutterable hate of an implacable enemy; for Trenck was his enemy, his much-feared enemy; he drove sleep from his eyes—he followed him in his dreams. Often at midnight Von Bruckhausen rose in terror from his couch, because he dreamed that Trenck had escaped, and that he must now take his place in that dark, fearful tomb. Surrounded by gay companions, he would turn pale and shudder at the thought of Trenck’s escaping—Trenck, whose fearful cell was then destined to be his. This constant fear and anxiety caused the commandant to see in Trenck not the king’s prisoner, but his own personal enemy, with whom he must do battle to his utmost strength, with all the wrath and fear of a timid soul. With a cold, malicious smile he informed him that his plot had been discovered, that his mad plan was known; he had wished to take the fortress of Magdeburg and place upon it the Austrian flag. With a jeering smile he held up to him the letter Trenck had sent to his friend in Vienna, in which, without mentioning names, he had made a slight sketch of his plan.
“Will you deny that you wrote this letter?” cried the commandant, in a threatening voice.