But on the whole he much preferred to take his liberty than to have it granted to him. If indeed liberty were granted, it would be with conditions "like those made by a lower class of brigands in the corner of a thicket," and the discussion would in all probability result in a shutting on him of quadruple doors.
He "much preferred to take his liberty than to have it granted to him." Accordingly plans were made. In one letter he calls for a good chart, arms, a passport, a wig, some drugs to insure a quiet night's sleep to the jailors, with instructions as to the dose to be given, and an itinerary for the route, with dangerous places indicated in it. They must know the exact time horses were to be ready, and the exact house where they were to stand. He was in buoyant spirits.
"Although a sojourn of fourteen months in the prisons of their Majesties has not contributed to my health," he wrote, "still I have a strong constitution and my early habits of life, added to the recollection of my fetters, will enable me to make a very rapid journey."
Finishing one of these letters, he says, "I hear them opening my first locks [the outer doors] and must stop writing." Latour-Maubourg adds a passage in his own hand. He begs for a piece of sealing wax and emphasizes that Lafayette must surely be rescued, whether the others are or not.
The prisoners looked out for those who were helping them to escape; these helpers were to be protected from suspicion. To do this they put a manikin with a nightcap on in Lafayette's bed, dug a channel under the chimney, and left a coat in the passage well smudged with soot.
Why none of these plans worked is not known. Lafayette was carted on to Neisse, but the plotting still went on. At last the grim and impregnable fortress of Olmütz received the three prisoners. Here he could receive no letters; he could read no paper; he was harshly told that he should never again know anything of what was going on in the outside world; that he was now a complete nonentity, a being known only by a number, and that no person in Europe knew where he was nor ever should know until his death.
Lafayette's misery was turned to a still darker hue by the fact that he felt the gravest alarm for the welfare of Madame de Lafayette. As he was being carted from prison to prison, on his way eastward toward that final destination in the mountain fortress, the news that was smuggled to him by secret and mysterious bearers was not of a kind to bring peace to his mind. He heard of the extremes to which the revolutionary frenzy was carrying the Parisian people; he heard that the king and queen and various members of their family had been proscribed, denounced, and sentenced to death by a committee miscalled a "Committee of Public Safety," and that the nobility were being ruthlessly sacrificed. Saddest of all this for him was the news that his wife, that woman of heroic character, of marvelous spiritual charm, and of liberal and philanthropic mind, had been imprisoned and was in danger of perishing on the scaffold. This word--and nothing more! The darkness of life behind walls seven feet thick was not lightened for many a long month by any further news in regard to Adrienne. The thoughts of Lafayette in his prison were as sad as can be imagined.