Gefhart had undertaken to deliver Trenck's letter to the princess,
asking for this money. This letter, written with his own blood upon
a piece of linen, had been forwarded through Gefhart's mistress, the
Jewess Rebecca, to Weingarten. He delivered it to the princess, and
received, through Pollnitz, two thousand thalers, which he did not
hand over to Rebecca, but retained for himself, and betrayed to the
king Trenck's intended flight.

This was but a short time before Weingarten's own flight; and while
he was enjoying the fruit of this base fraud in security and
freedom, poor Trenck was forced to descend still lower in the
citadel, and take possession of that frightful prison which, by
special command of the king, had been built and prepared for him, in
the lowest casemates of the fortress.

The king was greatly exasperated at these never-ending attempts of
Trenck to escape; his courage and endurance made him an interesting
and admired martyr to the whole garrison at Magdeburg.

Frederick wished to give to this garrison, and to all his soldiers,
a terrible example of the relentless severity with which
insubordination should be punished, to prove to them that mortal
daring and mortal energy were vain to escape the avenging hand of
royal justice.

Trenck, who, in the beginning, had only been condemned to arrest in
Glatz for six months, had, by his constant attempts at escape, and
the mad and eloquent expression of his rage, brought upon himself
the sentence of eternal imprisonment, in a subterranean cell, which,
by express command of the king, was so prepared, that neither guards