I had no doubts as to his curiosity, but many as to his discretion, and this very request shewed him to be the most indiscreet of men.  Nevertheless, I concluded that I must make use of him, for he seemed to me the kind of man to assist me in my escape.  I began to write an answer to him, but a sudden suspicion made me keep back what I had written.  I fancied that the correspondence might be a mere artifice of Lawrence’s to find out who had given me the tools, and what I had done with them.  To satisfy him without compromising myself I told him that I had made the hole with a strong knife in my possession, which I had placed on the window-ledge in the passage.  In less than three days this false confidence of mine made me feel secure, as Lawrence did not go to the window, as he would certainly have done if the letter had been intercepted.  Furthermore, Father Balbi told me that he could understand how I might have a knife, as Lawrence had told him that I had not been searched previous to my imprisonment.  Lawrence himself had received no orders to search me, and this circumstance might have stood him in good stead if I had succeeded in escaping, as all prisoners handed over to him by the captain of the guard were supposed to have been searched already.  On the other hand, Messer-Grande might have said that, having seen me get out of my bed, he was sure that I had no weapons about me, and thus both of them would have got out of trouble.  The monk ended by begging me to send him my knife by Nicolas, on whom I might rely.

The monk’s thoughtlessness seemed to me almost incredible.  I wrote and told him that I was not at all inclined to put my trust in Nicolas, and that my secret was one not to be imparted in writing.  However, I was amused by his letters.  In one of them he told me why Count Asquin was kept under the Leads, in spite of his helplessness, for he was enormously fat, and as he had a broken leg which had been badly set he could hardly put one foot before another.  It seems that the count, not being a very wealthy man, followed the profession of a barrister at Udine, and in that capacity defended the country-folk against the nobility, who wished to deprive the peasants of their vote in the assembly of the province.  The claims of the farmers disturbed the public peace, and by way of bringing them to reason the nobles had recourse to the State Inquisitors, who ordered the count-barrister to abandon his clients.  The count replied that the municipal law authorized him to defend the constitution, and would not give in; whereon the Inquisitors arrested him, law or no law, and for the last five years he had breathed the invigorating air of The Leads.  Like myself he had fifty sous a day, but he could do what he liked with the money.  The monk, who was always penniless, told me a good deal to the disadvantage of the count, whom he represented as very miserly.  He informed me that in the cell on the other side of the hall there were two gentlemen of the “Seven Townships,” who were likewise imprisoned for disobedience, but one of them had become mad, and was in chains; in another cell, he said, there were two lawyers.