and pardon on the King.

At that instant I snatched his sword from his side, on which my eyes
had some time been fixed, sprang out of the door, tumbled the
sentinel from the top to the bottom of the stairs, passed the men
who happened to be drawn up before the prison door to relieve the
guard, attacked them sword in hand, threw them suddenly into
surprise by the manner in which I laid about me, wounded four of
them, made way through the rest, sprang over the breastwork of the
ramparts, and, with my sword drawn in my hand, immediately leaped
this astonishing height without receiving the least injury. I
leaped the second wall with equal safety and good fortune. None of
their pieces were loaded; no one durst leap after me, and in order
to pursue, they must go round through the town and gate of the
citadel; so that I had the start full half an hour.

A sentinel, however, in a narrow passage, endeavoured to oppose my
flight, but I parried his fixed bayonet, and wounded him in the
face. A second sentinel, meantime, ran from the outworks, to seize
me behind, and I, to avoid him, made a spring at the palisadoes;
there I was unluckily caught by the foot, and received a bayonet
wound in the upper lip; thus entangled, they beat me with the butt-
end of their muskets, and dragged me back to prison, while I
struggled and defended myself like a man grown desperate.

Certain it is, had I more carefully jumped the palisadoes, and
despatched the sentinel who opposed me, I might have escaped, and
gained the mountains. Thus might I have fled to Bohemia, after
having, at noonday, broken from the fortress of Glatz, sprung past
all its sentinels, over all its walls, and passed with impunity, in