Page:Ernestus Berchtold or the Modern Œdipus.djvu/97

 power, I leapt, and caught with my hands at one of the bars. I raised myself, and resting my knee upon the shelving sill, I immediately began to employ my file, and the rusty bars soon gave way to my arm.

I paused a moment, the cool fresh air of the night, no longer poisoned by the noxious vapours of the subterranean dungeon, played amidst my hair; I seemed to inhale life. The moon’s ray, decked with one glittering streak of light the whole breadth of the wide lake; it seemed the path of hope. Not far distant was a barge; in three or four hours my murderers would be at my prison door. The ground was covered with snow even to the water’s edge; I leapt into the lake, and being a good swimmer I reached the boat numbed by the cold, I had hardly the strength to raise myself into it. There was no one to be found; there were some coarse provisions, a peasant’s habit, and a letter; it had no direction, “if safe,” it said, “proceed to Milan, you will hear