With heart rent by anguish and darkened by the gathering clouds, Lafayette, accompanied by a few friends, left his army at Sedan. Traversing the frontier, in the hope of reaching Holland, he fell into the hands of the Royal Coalition; and then commenced the catalogue of indignities and hardships under which his soul seemed rather to rise than to bend. His application for a passport was answered by the jeer that his passport would be for the scaffold, while a mob of furious royalists sought to anticipate the executioner. The King of Prussia, hoping to profit from his increasing debility, suggested that his situation would be improved in return for information against France. The patriot was aroused at this attempt on his character. “The King of Prussia is very impertinent,” he replied, while composing himself to the continued rigors which beset him. First immured at Wesel on the Rhine, he was next transported in a cart, by a long journey, to the far-famed Magdeburg, whose secrets have been disclosed by Baron Trenck, where for a year he was plunged in a damp subterranean dungeon, closed by four successive doors, all fastened by iron bolts, padlocks, and chains, when, on the separate peace between Prussia and the French Republic, he was handed over to Austrian jailers, by whom he was transferred to Olmütz, an outlying fortress, then little known, but now memorable in history, on the eastern border of Austria, further east than the old castle which witnessed the imprisonment of Richard Cœur-de-Lion and the generous devotion of Blondel. Here his captivity was complete. Alone in his cell, with no object in sight except the four walls,--shut out from all communication with the world,--shut out even from all knowledge of his family, who on their part could know nothing of him,--never addressed by name,--mentioned in the bulletins of the prison only by his number,--and, to cut off all possible escape by self-destruction, deprived of knife and fork: such was now his lot. If not a slave compelled to work without wages, he was even a more wretched captive.