Melmoth The Wanderer, Volume 2 by Charles Maturin

"Though life and liberty seemed so near, our situation was still very critical. The morning light that aided our escape, might open many an eye to mark it. There was not a moment to be lost. My companion proposed to ascend first, and I did not venture to oppose him. I was too much in his power to resist; and in early youth superiority of depravity always seems like a superiority of power. We reverence, with a prostituted idolatry, those who have passed through the degrees of vice before us. This man was criminal, and crime gave him a kind of heroic immunity in my eyes. Premature knowledge in life is always to be purchased by guilt. He knew more than I did, -- he was my all in this desperate attempt. I dreaded him as a demon, yet I invoked him as a god.

"In the end I submitted to his proposal. I was very tall, but he was much stronger than I. He rose on my shoulders, I trembled under his weight, but he succeeded in raising the trap-door, -- the full light of day broke on us both. In a moment he dropt his hold of the door, -- he fell to the ground with a force that struck me down. He exclaimed, "The workmen are there, they have come about the repairs, we are lost if we are discovered. They are there, the garden is full of them already, they will be there the whole day. That cursed lamp, it has undone us! Had it but kept in for a few moments, we might have been in the garden, might have crossed the wall, might have been at liberty, and now -- -- " He fell to the ground convulsed with rage and disappointment, as he spoke. To me there was nothing so terrible in this intelligence.