sanova, by the light of the lamp
constructed with so much difficulty, began his task. Drawing his bed
away, he set to work to bore through the plank underneath, gathering the
fragments of wood in a napkin--which the next morning he contrived to
empty out behind a heap of old cahier books in the corridor--and after
six hours' labour, pulling back his bed, which concealed all trace of it
from the gaoler's eyes.

The first plank was two inches thick; the next day he found another
plank beneath it, and he pierced this only to find a third plank. It was
three weeks before he dug out a cavity large enough for his purpose in
this depth of wood, and his disappointment was great when, underneath
the planks, he came to a marble pavement which resisted his one tool.
But he remembered having read of a general who had broken with an axe
hard stones, which he first made brittle by vinegar, and this Casanova
possessed. He poured a bottle of strong vinegar into the hole, and the
next day, whether it was the effect of the vinegar or of his stronger
resolution, he managed to loosen the cement which bound the pieces of
marble together, and in four hours had destroyed the pavement, and found
another plank, which, however, he believed to be the last.

At this point his work was once more interrupted by the arrival of a
fellow prisoner, who only stayed, however, for eight days. A more
serious delay was caused by the fact that unwittingly a part of his work
had been just above one of the great beams that supported the ceiling,
and he was forced to enlarge the hole by one-fourth. But at last all was
done. Through a hole so thin as to be quite imperceptible from below he
saw the room underneath. There was only a thin film of wood to be broken
through on the night of his escape. For various reasons, he had fixed on
the night of August 27. But hear his own words:

'On the 25th,' writes Casanova, 'there happened what makes me shudder
even as I write. Precisely at noon I heard the rattling of bolts, a
fearful beating of my heart made me think that my last moment had come,
and I flung myself on my armchair, stupefied. Laurent entered, and said
gaily:

'"Sir, I have come to bring you good news, on which I congratulate you!"

'At first I thought my liberty was to be restored--I knew no other news
which _could_ be good; and I saw that I was lost, for the discovery of
the hole would have undone me. But Laurent told me to follow him. I
asked him to