ith a narrow corridor,
no more than a shaft for light and air, which was immediately above
Casanova's prison. And no sooner had Balbi written, consenting, than
Casanova explained what was to do. Balbi must break through the wall
of his cell into the little corridor, and there cut a round hole in the
floor precisely as Casanova had done in his former cell--until nothing
but a shell of ceiling remained--a shell that could be broken down by
half a dozen blows when the moment to escape should have arrived.

To begin with, he ordered Balbi to purchase himself two or three dozen
pictures of saints, with which to paper his walls, using as many as
might be necessary for a screen to hide the hole he would be cutting.

When Balbi wrote that his walls were hung with pictures of saints, it
became a question of conveying the spontoon to him. This was difficult,
and the monk's fatuous suggestions merely served further to reveal his
stupidity. Finally Casanova's wits found the way. He bade Lorenzo buy
him an in-folio edition of the Bible which had just been published, and
it was into the spine of this enormous tome that he packed the precious
spontoon, and thus conveyed it to Balbi, who immediately got to work.

This was at the commencement of October. On the 8th of that month Balbi
wrote to Casanova that a whole night devoted to labour had resulted
merely in the displacing of a single brick, which so discouraged the
faint-hearted monk that he was for abandoning an attempt whose
only result must be to increase in the future the rigour of their
confinement.

Without hesitation, Casanova replied that he was assured of
success--although he was far from having any grounds for any such
assurance. He enjoined the monk to believe him, and to persevere,
confident that as he advanced he would find progress easier. This
proved, indeed, to be the case, for soon Balbi found the brickwork
yielding so rapidly to his efforts that one morning, a week later,
Casanova heard three light taps above his head--the preconcerted signal
by which they were to assure themselves that their notions of the
topography of the prison were correct.

All that day he heard Balbi at work immediately above him, and again on
the morrow, when Balbi wrote that as the floor was of the thickness of
only two boards, he counted upon completing the job on the next day,
without piercing the ceiling.

But it would seem as if Fortune were intent upon making a mock of
Casanova