Page:Statement of the attempted rescue of General Lafayette from Olmutz.djvu/11

 but uncommon ones. It is true, that if the Lieutenant or the Corporal Provost were to fetch me at some hour in the morning in the General’s name, I think I could get out. But it would be much easier for the Lieutenant, who can ride with me altho’ he does not, or for the Corporal, who to my great satisfaction accompanies me, when we are out of town to push forward and meet another carriage with prepared horses The scheme could not fail unless we were betrayed, which to avoid I have a plan equally easy, and you may depend upon an undoubted success. The Lieutenant is an old slavish hardened fool. The Corporal Provost, a more sensible, covetous, but treacherous and most cowardly rogue. He may be bribed, but his cowardice is such that he may prefer a little reward and no danger to a fortune with some risk. It is a thousand times better to go off in spite of him when we ride out together. We are in a phaeton, nobody with me but the little Corporal, who by the by is afflicted with a rupture, and a clumsy driver, who sometimes as to-day is left at home, and the Corporal drives me in the phaeton We go different roads, sometimes thro’ by-roads, and do not always return the same way we went; but we always go half a German mile, one league, or sometimes a full mile, two leagues from town. But suppose it half a mile, you must overtake us on horseback, as we generally drive slowly; have a trusty man with you, stop the driver. I engage to frighten the little cowardly Corporal with his own sword, I will not have the least difliculty to jump on a led horse, or the horse of a man who can ride some distance behind me. If the driver is not there, so much the better, if he is, he will do nothing but cross himself. Depend upon it, my dear sir, as you may choose your time and place, and have one or two sets of horses on the road, that nobody will think, dare or wish to hinder us; and before the slow formal General knows what we did, or what to do, we shall be safe. My friends LaTour, Moubourg and Pucy think it beyond doubt. It is for this I have asked to ride, and they have not asked it for themselves, in order that I may go out every day. The bolder it seems, and the more unexpected it is, the better it will succeed, and we may say with the poet.