though I had read "Mary of Agrada" I was not mad enough for that.

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Subterranean Prisons Known as the Wells--Lawrence's
Vengeance--I Enter into a Correspondence With Another
Prisoner, Father Balbi: His Character--I Plan With Him a
Means of Escape--How I Contrived to Let Him Have My Pike I
Am Given a Scoundrelly Companion: His Portrait.

I was thus anxious and despairing when two of the guards brought me my
bed. They went back to fetch the rest of my belongings, and for two hours
I saw no one, although the door of my cell remained open. This unnatural
delay engendered many thoughts, but I could not fix exactly on the reason
of it. I only knew that I had everything to fear, and this knowledge made
me brace up my mind so that I should be able to meet calmly all possible
misfortunes.

Besides The Leads and The Fours the State Inquisitors also possess
certain horrible subterranean cells beneath the ducal palace, where are
sent men whom they do not wish to put to death, though they be thought
worthy of it.

These subterranean prisons are precisely like tombs, but they call them
"wells," because they always contain two feet of water, which penetrates
from the sea by the same grating by which light is given, this grating
being only a square foot in size. If the unfortunates condemned to live
in these sewers do not wish to take a bath of filthy water, they have to
remain all day seated on a trestle, which serves them both for bed and
cupboard. In the morning they are given a pitcher of water, some thin
soup, and a ration of army bread which they have to eat immediately, or
it becomes the prey of the enormous water rats who swarm in those
dreadful abodes. Usually the wretches condemned to The Wells are
imprisoned there for life, and there have been prisoners who have
attained a great age. A villain who died whilst I was under the Leads had
passed thirty-seven years in The Wells, and he was forty-four when
sentenced. Knowing that he deserved death, it is possible that he took
his imprisonment as a favour, for there are men who fear nought save
death. His name was Beguelin. A Frenchman by birth, he had served in the
Venetian army during the last war against the Turks in 1716, under the
command of Field-Marshal the Count of Schulenbourg, who made the Grand
Vizier raise the siege of Corfu. This Beguelin was the marshal's spy. He
disguised himself as a Turk, and penetrated into th