“If I could rejoice at anything, I should rejoice at your release from this wretched place, and from the still more wretched charge that was laid on you,” F. Chevreuse continued; “but I have witnessed too much sorrow to be able to say more than God speed you.”
Mr. Schöninger did not appear to have heard the last words. He stood up and drew in a strong breath, and shivered all through. The thought that it was to be for him no slow fight for liberty, but that liberty was at the threshold, had at length entered his mind.
“Let me out of here!” he exclaimed, almost gasping. “I cannot breathe! Open the door. You cannot hold me any longer. Open the door, sir!” he cried to the warden, who stood outside, looking at him in astonishment.
F. Chevreuse began a hasty explanation to the officer; but the prisoner seized the bars of the door in his delirious impatience, and tried to wring them from their places.
“Seven months in a cage!” he exclaimed. “I cannot bear it another hour. Open the door, I say! Why do you stand there talking?”
“With all my heart, Mr. Schöninger!” the warden said. “But you must try to be calm. You have borne confinement patiently for seven months; try to bear it a little longer till the formalities of the law shall have been complied with. We cannot dispense with them. There shall be no delay, I assure you, sir.”
Mr. Schöninger was too proud to need a second exhortation to control himself; was, perhaps, annoyed that he should have incurred one. He immediately drew back, and seated himself. “Allow me to say, sir,” he remarked coldly, “that I have not borne imprisonment patiently. I have merely endured it because I was obliged to submit to force. And now will you please to open the door? I will not go out till I may; but set the door wide. Do not keep me any longer under lock and key.”
The warden called to his guard, who were not far away. Indeed, several of them, curious to know what was going on, had gathered in the corridor, only just out of sight of those in the cell.
“Unlock the door of Mr. Schöninger's cell,” he said in a loud voice. “He is no longer a prisoner.”
The bolts shot back, and the door clanged open against the stone casing.