I seized the bar with both my hands, and shook it with my whole force. Six months of confinement had not deprived my muscles of their strength, as I well perceived. I felt as if with one wrench I could bring away the whole grating. Did I deceive myself, or did it yield a little? I was not mistaken; either the screws were loose, or the wood-work decayed; I could not at the moment determine which; but this seemed no grating that could hold me. My heart beat with the exertion and the joyful surprise. I had vowed to myself that they should not keep me seven years! But caution! it was not the grating alone that made a prisoner of me. Were the grating away, there was a depth of at least thirty feet to the stone pavement of the court. And were I safely down, there were doubtless other difficulties to overcome, and a baffled attempt at escape might make my position incalculably worse.
I heard a rustling in the passage. Footsteps drew near and came to my door. I sprang back from the window and stood in the centre of the room, when there was a rattling of keys on the outside, the door opened, and a man of tall stature entered, passing the turnkey, and the door was closed after him. He stood for a moment at the threshold, and then approached me with a peculiar light step. From the ruddy evening clouds there still fell a pale rosy light into the room; in this rosy glow I always see him again when I think of him--and how often do I think of him, with the deepest emotions of gratitude and love!
Over the table at which I am writing these words, hangs his portrait, painted by a beloved hand. It is a most perfect likeness. It would recall to my memory every feature, every line, were it possible that I could forget them. And now, did I close my eyes, he would stand before me again as he stood on that evening, in the rosy sunset light, and not less clearly would I hear his voice, whose soft, deep tone I then heard for the first time, and whose first word was one of pity and sympathy.
How deeply must the prison air have poisoned my heart, that these words and the tone in which they were spoken did not move me! Alas, it is one of my most painful recollections that this was so; that I rudely repulsed the hand of the noblest of men, and deliberately wounded the kindest heart on earth. But the narrative of my life would have no worth, if my faults were not honestly set down. And I have often thought that I might not have learned to love him so well had I been less obdurate at first, had I not given him the occasion to heap upon me all the wealth of his benevolence and love. And yet I err in this. Jewels of the costliest price, of the purest water, need no dark foil.