, luring him to heights of hope, merely to cast him down again
into the depths of despair. Just as upon the eve of breaking out of his
former cell mischance had thwarted him, so now, when again he deemed
himself upon the very threshold of liberty, came mischance again to
thwart him.

Early in the afternoon the sound of bolts being drawn outside froze his
very blood and checked his breathing. Yet he had the presence of mind to
give the double knock that was the agreed alarm signal, whereupon Balbi
instantly desisted from his labours overhead.

Came Lorenzo with two archers, leading an ugly, lean little man of
between forty and fifty years of age, shabbily dressed and wearing a
round black wig, whom the tribunal had ordered should share Casanova's
prison for the present. With apologies for leaving such a scoundrel in
Casanova's company, Lorenzo departed, and the newcomer went down upon
his knees, drew forth a chaplet, and began to tell his beads.

Casanova surveyed this intruder at once with disgust and despair.
Presently his disgust was increased when the fellow, whose name was
Soradici, frankly avowed himself a spy in the service of the Council
of Ten, a calling which he warmly defended from the contempt
universally--but unjustly, according to himself--meted out to it. He had
been imprisoned for having failed in his duty on one occasion through
succumbing to a bribe.

Conceive Casanova's frame of mind--his uncertainty as to how long this
monster, as he calls him, might be left in his company, his curbed
impatience to regain his liberty, and his consciousness of the horrible
risk of discovery which delay entailed! He wrote to Balbi that
night while the spy slept, and for the present their operations were
suspended. But not for very long. Soon Casanova's wits resolved how to
turn to account the weakness which he discovered in Soradici.

The spy was devout to the point of bigoted, credulous superstition. He
spent long hours in prayer, and he talked freely of his special devotion
to the Blessed Virgin, and his ardent faith in miracles.

Casanova--the arch-humbug who had worked magic to delude the
credulous--determined there and then to work a miracle for Soradici.
Assuming an inspired air, he solemnly informed the spy one morning that
it had been revealed to him in a dream that Soradici's devotion to
the Rosary was about to be rewarded; that an angel was to be sent from
heaven to deliver him from prison, and that Casa