icture."

"I promise, Holy Mother of God, that when Lawrence comes I will not look
at him, nor stir from my bed."

"And I, Most Holy Virgin, swear by the bowels of your Divine Son that if
I see Soradici move in the least or look towards Lawrence, I will throw
myself straightway upon him and strangle him without mercy, to your
honour and glory."

I counted on my threat having at least as much effect upon him as his
oath. Nevertheless, as I was anxious to make sure, I asked him if he had
anything to say against the oath, and after thinking for a moment he
answered that he was quite content with it. Well pleased myself, I gave
him something to eat, and told him to go to bed as I needed sleep.

As soon as he was asleep I began to write, and wrote on for two hours. I
told Balbi all that had happened, and said that if the work was far
enough advanced he need only come above my cell to put the final stroke
to it and break through. I made him note that we should set out on the
night of the 31st of October, and that we should be four in all, counting
his companion and mine. It was now the twenty-eighth of the month.

In the morning the monk wrote me that the passage was made, and that he
should only require to work at the ceiling of my cell to break through
the last board and this would be done in four minutes. Soradaci observed
his oath, pretending to sleep, and Lawrence said nothing to him. I kept
my eyes upon him the whole time, and I verily believe I should have
strangled him if he had made the slightest motion towards Lawrence, for a
wink would have been enough to betray me.

The rest of the day was devoted to high discourses and exalted
expressions, which I uttered as solemnly as I could, and I enjoyed the
sight of seeing him become more and more fanatical. To heighten the
effect of my mystic exhortation I dosed him heavily with wine, and did
not let him go till he had fallen into a drunken sleep.

Though a stranger to all metaphysical speculations, and a man who had
never exercised his reasoning faculties except in devising some piece of
spy-craft, the fellow confused me for a moment by saying that he could
not conceive how an angel should have to take so much trouble to break
open our cell. But after lifting my eyes to heaven, or rather to the roof
of my dungeon-cell, I said,

"The ways of God are inscrutable; and since the messenger of Heaven works
not as an angel (for then a slight single blow would be enough),