It is true, my first sensation was extremely painful; it was, perhaps, a horror of hopelessness.
I cannot recall what I did and how I felt during the two or three months that followed.

The first note in my diary after a long period of silence does not explain very much.

Briefly I state only that they made new clothes for me and that I had grown stout.
The fact is that, after all my hopes had been abandoned, the consciousness of the impossibility of my escape once for all extinguished also my painful alarm and liberated my mind, which was then already inclined to lofty contemplation and the joys of mathematics.
But the following is the day I consider as the first real day of my liberation.

It was a beautiful spring morning (May 6) and the balmy, invigourating air was pouring into the open window; while walking back and forth in my cell I unconsciously glanced, at each turn, with a vague interest, at the high window, where the iron grate outlined its form sharply and distinctly against the background of the azure, cloudless sky.
"Why is the sky so beautiful through these bars ?" I reflected as I walked.

"Is not this the effect of the aesthetic law of contrasts, according to which azure stands out prominently beside black?
Or is it not, perhaps, a manifestation of some other, higher law, according to which the infinite may be conceived by the human mind only when it is brought within certain boundaries, for instance, when it is enclosed within a square ?" When I recalled that at the sight of a wide open window, which was not protected by bars, or of the sky, I had usually experienced a desire to fly, which was painful because of its uselessness and absurdity--I suddenly began to experience a feeling of tenderness for the bars; tender gratitude, even love.