The monarch resolved to gratify his malignity by removing them to still more dismal and unhealthy dungeons. Whereupon, the prisoners were conducted to Magdebourg; and as they were thrown into the loathsome vaults of that prison, they were informed that they should never again behold the light of day. Here they existed, desolate and despairing, for a year. Frederic William occasionally sent to learn if their sufferings were sufficiently intense to satisfy his fiendish cruelty, and then devised new torments. La Fayette dared not send letters to his wife, fearing that his writing would be recognized, and accordingly addressed them to a friend in England, hoping that his family would in some manner receive them. He thus describes his situation:— “Imagine an opening made under the rampart of the citadel, and surrounded with a strong high palisade; through this, after opening four doors, each armed with chains, bars, and padlocks, they come, not without some difficulty and noise, to my cell, three paces wide, five and a half long. The wall is mouldy on the side of the ditch, and the front one admits light, but not sunshine, through a little grated window. Add to this two sentinels, whose eyes penetrate into this lower region, but who are kept outside the palisade, lest they should speak; other watchers not belonging to the guard; and all the walls, ramparts, ditches, guards, within and without the citadel of Magdebourg, and you will think that the foreign powers neglect nothing to keep us within their dominions. “The noisy opening of the four doors is repeated every morning to admit my servant; at dinner, that I may eat in the presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard; and at night, to take my servant to his prison. After having shut upon me all the doors, the commandant carries off the keys to the room where, since our arrival, the king has ordered him to sleep. “I have books, the white leaves of which are taken out, but no news, no newspapers, no communications,—neither pen, ink, paper, nor pencil. It is a wonder that I possess this sheet, and I am writing with a toothpick. My health fails daily.... The account I have given you may serve for my companions, whose treatment is the same.” [Illustration] FRED‘K WILLIAM II. FRANCIS I. KING OF PRUSSIA. EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA. At length, despairing of making La Fayette yield by any cruelties, however barbarous, the Prussian king, fearing that the peace which he was concluding with France would require the surrender of La Fayette, he determined to transfer him, with Maubourg and De Pusy, to the Austrians. Olmütz was selected by their new jailers, and the prisoners were accordingly carried thither.