hat day.

A fortnight after Easter I was delivered from my troublesome Israelite,
and the poor devil instead of being sent back to his home had to spend
two years in The Fours, and on his gaining his freedom he went and set up
in Trieste, where he ended his days.

No sooner was I again alone than I set zealously about my work. I had to
make haste for fear of some new visitor, who, like the Jew, might insist
on the cell being swept. I began by drawing back my bed, and after
lighting my lamp I lay down on my belly, my pike in my hand, with a
napkin close by in which to gather the fragments of board as I scooped
them out. My task was to destroy the board by dint of driving into it the
point of my tool. At first the pieces I got away were not much larger
than grains of wheat, but they soon increased in size.

The board was made of deal, and was sixteen inches broad. I began to
pierce it at its juncture with another board, and as there were no nails
or clamps my work was simple. After six hours' toil I tied up the napkin,
and put it on one side to empty it the following day behind the pile of
papers in the garret. The fragments were four or five times larger in
bulk than the hole from whence they came. I put back my bed in its place,
and on emptying the napkin the next morning I took care so to dispose the
fragments that they should not be seen.

Having broken through the first board, which I found to be two inches
thick, I was stopped by a second which I judged to be as thick as the
first. Tormented by the fear of new visitors I redoubled my efforts, and
in three weeks I had pierced the three boards of which the floor was
composed; and then I thought that all was lost, for I found I had to
pierce a bed of small pieces of marble known at Venice as terrazzo
marmorin. This forms the usual floor of venetian houses of all kinds,
except the cottages, for even the high nobility prefer the terrazzo to
the finest boarded floor. I was thunderstruck to find that my bar made no
impression on this composition; but, nevertheless, I was not altogether
discouraged and cast down. I remembered Hannibal, who, according to Livy,
opened up a passage through the Alps by breaking the rocks with axes and
other instruments, having previously softened them with vinegar. I
thought that Hannibal had succeeded not by aceto, but aceta, which in the
Latin of Padua might well be the same as ascia; and who can guarantee the
text to be free from the blun