You don’t know what you do by keeping me here. I am speaking from the depths of my heart, of my very soul. You don’t know whom you wrong, or how, and I may not tell. Woe is me! I may not tell. By all you hold sacred, by all you hold dear, by your love that is lost, by your hope that lives, for the sake of the Almighty, take me out of this and save my soul from guilt! Can’t you hear me, man? Can’t you understand? Will you never learn? Don’t you know that I am sane and earnest now, that I am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane man fighting for his soul? Oh, hear me! Hear me! Let me go, let me go, let me go!
– Bram Stoker
Dracula, Chapter 18. Renfield makes a very articulate and sane-like plea to Dr. Seward to release him from the lunatic asylum, not for his own sake for that of others. He warns that there will be dire consequences if he is not released. This foreshadows something bad to come, if he continues to be confined in the asylum. He says this not as a threat, but as the words of a man who does not wish to be guilty of something. Renfield fears that Dracula may manipulate him and cause him to do harm to Mina.