“Hitherto, you perceive that we have had none of the conveniences promised by the emperor to Madame La Fayette. It is probably a great honor to be his Majesty’s guest, particularly in a prison: but the thing is really no laughing matter. The breakfast is of chocolate, or coffee with milk, at the prisoner’s option, and both are execrable, as you may well imagine when you are informed that they are made by a _vivandière_, in a small kitchen, into which the soldiers from the barracks enter at pleasure, and where their whole time is spent in smoking. It thus happens that everything eaten by us is impregnated with a strong savor of tobacco, and we are even fortunate when we do not find large pieces of that weed in what is given to us. Our dinner is served up in deep earthenware dishes; and with regard to cleanliness, as everything comes from the kitchen of the same _vivandière_, whose execrable ragouts, rancid butter, and spices I might forgive, were she herself less dirty. To fill up the measure of disgust, everything—meat, soup, vegetables, fricassees—must be eaten with a pewter spoon, without knife or fork, and had we not brought napkins along with us, some fragment of which still remain, the sleeves of our coats must have served for that purpose. Two pint jugs are brought to us full, one of coarse, flat, red wine, the other of dirty water, and we must drink out of both, because, as it was explained to me, ‘the emperor chooses it.’ You will conceive, the disgust inspired by these jugs, when I add that when removed from our chambers they are placed in the windows of the corridor, where they are exposed to insects, dust, tobacco smoke, and what is still worse, left for the use of the soldiers, who drink out of them and perform their ablutions in them. They are cleaned only at stated periods, at the beginning and in the middle of each month, with a wisp of straw. “From these details you will perceive that, as a relief from our vexations, which are the more annoying as they have not even the semblance of necessity; and to diminish the tedious length of the days, we have no other resource than reading. In Silesia we had been allowed the use of paper, pen, and ink; but at the mention of this our jailers were greatly astonished, and bestowed contemptuous epithets on the want of intelligence displayed by the Prussians in tormenting their victims. We were deprived even of the letters which we had received from our relatives and friends, and were informed that we were separated from the rest of the world, that we must forget our own names, and recollect only our numbers, by which only we were to be known, and that we should never hear each other spoken of.