was fain to escape from this hell on earth, where I was imprisoned by a most detestable tyranny, and I thought only of forwarding this end, with the resolve to succeed, or at all events not to stop before I came to a difficulty which was insurmountable.  I had read in the great book of experience that in important schemes action is the grand requisite, and that the rest must be left to fortune.  If I had entrusted Father Balbi with these deep mysteries of moral philosophy he would have pronounced me a madman.  His work was only toilsome on the first night, for the more he worked the easier it became, and when he had finished he found he had taken out thirty-six bricks.

On the 16th of October, as I was engaged in translating an ode of Horace, I heard a trampling noise above my head, and then three light blows were struck.  This was the signal agreed upon to assure us that our calculations were correct.  He worked till the evening, and the next day he wrote that if the roof of my cell was only two boards thick his work would be finished that day.  He assured me that he was carefully making the hole round as I had charged him, and that he would not pierce the ceiling.  This was a vital point, as the slightest mark would have led to discovery.  “The final touch,” he said, “will only take a quarter of an hour.”  I had fixed on the day after the next to escape from my cell at night-time to enter no more, for with a mate I was quite sure that I could make in two or three hours a hole in the roof of the ducal palace, and once on the outside of the roof I would trust to chance for the means of getting to the ground.

I had not yet got so far as this, for my bad luck had more than one obstacle in store for me.  On the same day (it was a Monday) at two o’clock in the afternoon, whilst Father Balbi was at work, I heard the door of the hall being opened.  My blood ran cold, but I had sufficient presence of mind to knock twice-the signal of alarm—­at which it had been agreed that Father Balbi was to make haste back to his cell and set all in order.  In less than a minute afterwards Lawrence opened the door, and begged my pardon for giving me a very unpleasant companion.  This was a man between forty and fifty, short, thin, ugly, and badly dressed, wearing a black wig; while I was looking at him he was unbound by two guards.  I had no reason to doubt that he was a knave, since Lawrence told me so before his face without his displaying the slightest emotion.  “The Court,” I said, “can do what seems good to it.”  After Lawrence had brought him a bed he told him that the Court allowed him ten sous a day, and then locked us up together.

Overwhelmed by this disaster, I glanced at the fellow, whom his every feature proclaimed rogue.  I was about to speak to him when he began by thanking me for having got him a bed.  Wishing to gain him over, I invited him to take his meals with me.  He kissed my hand, and asked me if he would still be able to claim the ten sous which the Court had allowed him.  On my answering in the affirmative he fell on his knees, and drawing an enormous rosary from his pocket he cast his gaze all round the cell.