enmity. Gentle to my inferiors, but impatient of contradiction, and
proud of resisting power, I may hence date, the origin of all my
evils.

How might a man, imbued with the heroic principles of liberty, hope
for advancement and happiness, under the despotic and iron
Government of Frederic? I was taught neither to know nor to avoid,
but to despise the whip of slavery. Had I learnt hypocrisy, craft,
and meanness, I had long since become field-marshal, had been in
possession of my Hungarian estates, and had not passed the best
years of my life in the dungeons of Magdeburg. I was addicted to no
vice: I laboured in the cause of science, honour, and virtue; kept
no vicious company; was never in the whole of my life intoxicated;
was no gamester, no consumer of time in idleness nor brutal
pleasures; but devoted many hundred laborious nights to studies that
might make me useful to my country; yet was I punished with a
severity too cruel even for the most worthless, or most villanous.

I mean, in my narrative, to make candour and veracity my guides, and
not to conceal my failings; I wish my work may remain a moral lesson
to the world. Yet it is an innate satisfaction that I am conscious
of never having acted with dishonour, even to the last act of this
distressful tragedy.

I shall say little of the first years of my life, except that my
father took especial care of my education, and sent me, at the age
of thirteen, to the University of Konigsberg, where, under the
tuition of Kowalewsky, my progress was rapid. There were fourteen
other noblemen in the same house, and under the same master.