Though placed within the same castle, and occupying cells in the same corridor, the friends were as completely guarded against all intercourse with each other, and all knowledge of each other’s condition, as if an ocean or a continent separated them. As they entered their cells, it was declared to each of them, “that they would never come out of them alive; that they would never see anything but what was enclosed within the four walls of their respective cells; that they would hold no communication with the outer world, nor receive any kind of information of persons or things there; that their jailers were even prohibited from pronouncing their names; that in the prison reports and government despatches they would be referred to only by the number of their cells; that they would never be suffered to learn anything of the situation of their families, or even to know of each other’s existence; and that, as such a situation of hopeless confinement would naturally incite to suicide, knives and forks, and all other instruments by which they might do violence to themselves, would be thenceforth withheld from them.” Such were Austria’s improvements upon the cruelties of Prussia. In a dark and loathsome dungeon, the walls of which were twelve feet thick, and guarded by doors of wood and iron, covered with bolts and bars, the only air admitted into the cell coming through a loophole in the wall, beneath which was a ditch of stagnant water whose poisonous effluvium stifled the suffering victim on a bed of rotten straw filled with vermin, by the side of which stood a worm-eaten table and broken chair, lay the sick and tortured La Fayette, whose keen anxieties regarding the fate of his adored wife and children were added to the bodily torments which his enemies inflicted upon him. Again he became ill. His physician represented to the authorities that fresh air was absolutely necessary; three times the brutal answer was sent, “He is not yet sick enough.” At length, however, he was allowed a daily walk of a few moments under the eye of his jailer. The news of the imprisonment of La Fayette had been received with profound sorrow throughout the world. Many efforts had been put forth in his behalf from time to time. While La Fayette was at Magdebourg, the American minister in France took upon himself the responsibility of directing the banker of the United States, at Hamburgh, to advance ten thousand florins, which were sent to La Fayette, and was the means of procuring for him many needed comforts. This act was afterwards ratified by Congress under the head of military compensation. The imprisonment of his loyal and devoted young friend caused the warm heart of Washington the deepest anguish, but, as the president of a neutral nation, his public acts were governed by caution; though his personal influence as a man in behalf of his friend was strong in endeavoring to secure the release of the marquis. To Mr. Pinckney, then in Europe, he thus wrote:—