with fresh
revilings.

A sound of steps and a rattle of keys stemmed Balbi's reproaches in full
flow. The lock groaned.

"Not a word," said Casanova to the monk, "but follow me."

Holding his spontoon ready, but concealed under his coat, he stepped to
the side of the door. It opened, and the porter, who had come alone
and bareheaded, stared in stupefaction at the strange apparition of
Casanova.

Casanova took advantage of that paralyzing amazement. Without uttering a
word, he stepped quickly across the threshold, and with Balbi close upon
his heels, he went down the Giant's Staircase in a flash, crossed the
little square, reached the canal, bundled Balbi into the first gondola
he found there, and jumped in after him.

"I want to go to Fusine, and quickly," he announced. "Call another
oarsman."

All was ready, and in a moment the gondola was skimming the canal.
Dressed in his unseasonable suit, and accompanied by the still more
ridiculous figure of Balbi in his gaudy cloak and without a hat, he
imagined he would be taken for a charlatan or an astrologer.

The gondola slipped past the custom-house, and took the canal of the
Giudecca. Halfway down this, Casanova put his head out of the little
cabin to address the gondolier in the poop.

"Do you think we shall reach Mestre in an hour?"

"Mestre?" quoth the gondolier. "But you said Fusine."

"No, no, I said Mestre--at least, I intended to say Mestre."

And so the gondola was headed for Mestre by a gondolier who professed
himself ready to convey his excellency to England if he desired it.

The sun was rising, and the water assumed an opalescent hue. It was a
delicious morning, Casanova tells us, and I suspect that never had any
morning seemed to that audacious, amiable rascal as delicious as this
upon which he regained his liberty, which no man ever valued more
highly.

In spirit he was already safely over the frontiers of the Most Serene
Republic, impatient to transfer his body thither, as he shortly did,
through vicissitudes that are a narrative in themselves, and no part of
this story of his escape from the Piombi and the Venetian Inquisitors of
State.

XIII. THE NIGHT OF MASQUERADE--The Assassination Of Gustavus III Of Sweden

Baron Bjelke sprang from his carriage almost before it had come to a
standstill and without waiting for the footman to let down the steps.
With a haste entirely foreign to a person of his station and importance,
he swept