[Pg 225]Another answer, equally inconsiderate of royal feelings, resulted in the transfer of the prisoners to Magdebourg, where they were kept a year. On these journeys from place to place they served as a show to hundreds who pressed to see them. There were even attempts to injure them, but Lafayette believed he saw more pitying faces than hostile ones in the crowds. Once fate brought them to an inn at the same moment with the Comte d'Artois and his retinue, all of whom, with a single exception, proved blind to the presence of their former friends. We have details of the way in which Lafayette was lodged and treated at Magdebourg, from a letter he managed to send to his stanch friend, the Princesse d'Hénin in London. "Imagine an opening under the rampart of the citadel, surrounded by a high, strong palisade. It is through that, after opening successively four doors each guarded with chains and padlocks and bars of iron, that one reaches, not without some trouble and some noise, my dungeon, which is three paces wide and five and a half long. The side wall is covered with mold; that in front lets in light, but not the sun, through a small barred window. Add to this two sentinels who can look down into our subterranean chamber, but are outside the palisade so that we cannot speak to them.... The noisy opening of our four doors occurs every morning to allow my servant to enter; at dinner-time, that I may dine in presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard; and at night when my servant is taken away to his cell." The one ornament [Pg 226]on his prison wall was a French inscription, in which the dismal words _souffrir_ and _mourir_ were made to rhyme. The one break in the prison routine had been an execution, upon which, had he chosen, Lafayette could have looked from his window as from a box at the opera.