rom the plate,
which he had enough to do to carry evenly. I followed him with my eyes
till he disappeared into the ante-chamber of the monk's cell, and he,
blowing his nose three times, gave me the pre-arranged signal that all
was right, which was confirmed by the appearance of Lawrence in a few
moments afterwards.

Father Balbi lost no time in setting about the work, and in eight days he
succeeded in making a large enough opening in the ceiling, which he
covered with a picture pasted to the ceiling with breadcrumbs. On the 8th
of October he wrote to say that he had passed the whole night in working
at the partition wall, and had only succeeded in loosening one brick. He
told me the difficulty of separating the bricks joined to one another by
a strong cement was enormous, but he promised to persevere, "though," he
said, "we shall only make our position worse than it is now." I told him
that I was certain of success; that he must believe in me and persevere.
Alas! I was certain of nothing, but I had to speak thus or to give up
all. I 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,