From the public papers I learned my cousin, the Austrian Trenck, was
at this time closely confined, and under criminal prosecution. It
will easily be imagined what effect this news had upon me.

Never till now had I felt any inconvenience from poverty; my wants
had all been amply supplied, and I had ever lived among, and been
highly loved and esteemed by, the first people of the land. I was
destitute, without aid, and undetermined how to seek employment, or
obtain fame.

At length I determined to travel on foot to Prussia to my mother,
and obtain money from her, and afterwards enter into the Russian
service. Schell, whose destiny was linked to mine, would not
forsake me. We assumed false names: I called myself Knert, and
Schell, Lesch; then, obtaining passports, like common deserters, we
left Braunau on the 21st of January, in the evening, unseen of any
person, and proceeded towards Bielitz in Poland. A friend I had at
Neurode gave me a pair of pocket pistols, a musket, and three
ducats; the money was spent at Braunau. Here let me take occasion
to remark I had lent this friend, in urgent necessity, a hundred
ducats, which he still owed me; and when I sent to request payment,
he returned me three, as if I had asked charity.

Though a circumstantial description of our travels alone would fill
a volume, I shall only relate the most singular accidents which
happened to us; I shall also insert the journal of our route, which
Schell had preserved, and gave me in 1776, when he came to see me at
Aix-la-Chapelle, after an absence of thirty years.