“My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages.  Show them to people who know the languages.  Let them read them.  If they find not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden.  That shot will show me that my efforts have not been thrown away.  The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages, but the same flame burns in them all.  Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them!” The prisoner’s desire was fulfilled.  The banker ordered two shots to be fired in the garden.

Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and read nothing but the Gospel.  It seemed strange to the banker that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension.  Theology and histories of religion followed the Gospels.

In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately.  At one time he was busy with the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or Shakespeare.  There were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology.  His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another.

II

The old banker remembered all this, and thought: 

“To-morrow at twelve o’clock he will regain his freedom.  By our agreement I ought to pay him two millions.  If I do pay him, it is all over with me:  I shall be utterly ruined.”

Fifteen years before, his millions had been beyond his reckoning; now he was afraid to ask himself which were greater, his debts or his assets.  Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments.  “Cursed bet!” muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair “Why didn’t the man die?  He is only forty now.  He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy life, will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look at him with envy like a beggar, and hear from him every day the same sentence:  ’I am indebted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!’ No, it is too much!  The one means of being saved from bankruptcy and disgrace is the death of that man!”

It struck three o’clock, the banker listened; everyone was asleep in the house and nothing could be heard outside but the rustling of the chilled trees.  Trying to make no noise, he took from a fireproof safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.