It lasted for three and a half hours, and I was awakened by the monk’s calling out and shaking me.  He told me that it had just struck five.  He said it was inconceivable to him how I could sleep in the situation we were in.  But that which was inconceivable to him was not so to me.  I had not fallen asleep on purpose, but had only yielded to the demands of exhausted nature, and, if I may say so, to the extremity of my need.  In my exhaustion there was nothing to wonder at, since I had neither eaten nor slept for two days, and the efforts I had made—­efforts almost beyond the limits of mortal endurance—­might well have exhausted any man.  In my sleep my activity had come back to me, and I was delighted to see the darkness disappearing, so that we should be able to proceed with more certainty and quickness.

Casting a rapid glance around, I said to myself, “This is not a prison, there ought, therefore, be some easy exit from it.”  We addressed ourselves to the end opposite to the folding-doors, and in a narrow recess I thought I made out a doorway.  I felt it over and touched a lock, into which I thrust my pike, and opened it with three or four heaves.  We then found ourselves in a small room, and I discovered a key on a table, which I tried on a door opposite to us, which, however, proved to be unlocked.  I told the monk to go for our bundles, and replacing the key we passed out and came into a gallery containing presses full of papers.  They were the state archives.  I came across a short flight of stone stairs, which I descended, then another, which I descended also, and found a glass door at the end, on opening which I entered a hall well known to me:  we were in the ducal chancery.  I opened a window and could have got down easily, but the result would have been that we should have been trapped in the maze of little courts around St. Mark’s Church.  I saw on a desk an iron instrument, of which I took possession; it had a rounded point and a wooden handle, being used by the clerks of the chancery to pierce parchments for the purpose of affixing the leaden seals.  On opening the desk I saw the copy of a letter advising the Proveditore of Corfu of a grant of three thousand sequins for the restoration of the old fortress.  I searched for the sequins but they were not there.  God knows how gladly I would have taken them, and how I would have laughed the monk to scorn if he had accused me of theft!  I should have received the money as a gift from Heaven, and should have regarded myself as its master by conquest.

Going to the door of the chancery, I put my bar in the keyhole, but finding immediately that I could not break it open, I resolved on making a hole in the door.  I took care to choose the side where the wood had fewest knots, and working with all speed I struck as hard and as cleaving strokes as I was able.  The monk, who helped me as well as he could with the punch I had taken from the desk, trembled at the echoing clamour of my pike which must have been audible at some distance.  I felt the danger myself, but it had to be risked.