I am going away from your prison," thus read the phrase.

And he really did go away. Here are the walls, here is the little window
in the door, here is our prison, but he is not there; he has gone away.
Consequently I, too, could go away. Instead of having wasted dozens of
years on a titanic struggle, instead of being tormented by the throes of
despair, instead of growing enfeebled by horror in the face of unsolved
mysteries, of striving to subject the world to my mind and my will, I
could have climbed the table and--one instant of pain--I would be
free; I would be triumphant over the lock and the walls, over truth
and falsehood, over joys and sufferings. I will not say that I had not
thought of suicide before as a means of escaping from our prison, but
now for the first time it appeared before me in all its attractiveness.
In a fit of base faint-heartedness, which I shall not conceal from my
reader, even as I do not conceal from him my good qualities; perhaps
even in a fit of temporary insanity I momentarily forgot all I knew
about our prison and its great purpose. I forgot--I am ashamed to
say--even the great formula of the iron grate, which I conceived and
mastered with such difficulty, and I prepared a noose made of my towel
for the purpose of strangling myself. But at the last moment, when all
was ready, and it was but necessary to push away the taburet, I asked
myself, with my habit of reasoning which did not forsake me even at that
time: But where am I going? The answer was: I am going to death. But
what is death? And the answer was: I do not know.

These brief reflections were enough for me to come to myself, and with
a bitter laugh at my cowardice I removed the fatal noose from my neck.
Just as I had been ready to sob for grief a minute before, so now I
laughed--I laughed like a madman, realising that another trap, placed
before me by derisive fate, had so brilliantly been evaded by me. Oh,
how many traps there are in the life of man! Like a cunning fisherman,
fate catches him now with the alluring bait of some truth, now with the
hairy little worm of dark falsehood, now with the phantom of life, now
with the phantom of death.

My dear young man, my fascinating fool, my charming silly fellow--who
told you that our prison ends here, that from one prison you did not
fall into another prison, from which it will hardly be possible for
you to run away? You were too hasty, my friend, you forgot to ask me
something