“It is certain,” says Trenck, “that nothing but pride and self-love, or rather a consciousness of my innocence, together with a special confidence in my resolutions, kept me afterward alive. The hard exercise of my body and my mind, always busy in projects to obtain my freedom, preserved at the same time my health. But who would believe that a daily exercise could be taken in my chains? I shook the upper part of my body and leaped up and down till the sweat poured from my brows, and by this means I grew fatigued and slept soundly. “By degrees I accustomed myself to my chains. I learned to comb my hair and at length even to tie it with one hand. My beard, which had not yet been shaved, gave me a frightful appearance. This I plucked out; the pain was considerable, more especially about the lips; however, I became accustomed to this also and performed the operation during the following years, once every six weeks or two months, for the hairs being pulled out by the roots required that length of time to grow again long enough to lay hold of them with my nails. Vermin never tormented me; the great dampness of the walls was not favourable to them; neither did my limbs swell, because I took the exercise already mentioned; the constant darkness alone was the greatest hardship. However, I had read, learned and already seen and experienced much in the world; therefore I always found matter to banish melancholy from my thoughts, and in spite of every obstacle, could connect my ideas as well as if I had read them, or written them on paper. Habit made me so perfect in this mental exercise that I composed whole speeches, fables, poems and satires, and repeated them aloud to myself. At the same time they were impressed so forcibly on my memory that after I obtained my freedom I could have written a couple of volumes of such works.