brous shoots forced their way through the chasm, and
hung floating to and fro, like so many waving strings. The person whose
mysterious arrival had attracted the attention of Franz stood in a kind
of half-light, that rendered it impossible to distinguish his features,
although his dress was easily made out. He wore a large brown mantle,
one fold of which, thrown over his left shoulder, served likewise
to mask the lower part of his countenance, while the upper part was
completely hidden by his broad-brimmed hat. The lower part of his dress
was more distinctly visible by the bright rays of the moon, which,
entering through the broken ceiling, shed their refulgent beams on feet
cased in elegantly made boots of polished leather, over which descended
fashionably cut trousers of black cloth.

From the imperfect means Franz had of judging, he could only come to
one conclusion,--that the person whom he was thus watching certainly
belonged to no inferior station of life. Some few minutes had elapsed,
and the stranger began to show manifest signs of impatience, when a
slight noise was heard outside the aperture in the roof, and almost
immediately a dark shadow seemed to obstruct the flood of light that had
entered it, and the figure of a man was clearly seen gazing with eager
scrutiny on the immense space beneath him; then, as his eye caught
sight of him in the mantle, he grasped a floating mass of thickly matted
boughs, and glided down by their help to within three or four feet
of the ground, and then leaped lightly on his feet. The man who had
performed this daring act with so much indifference wore the Transtevere
costume. "I beg your excellency's pardon for keeping you waiting," said
the man, in the Roman dialect, "but I don't think I'm many minutes after
my time, ten o'clock has just struck on the Lateran."

"Say not a word about being late," replied the stranger in purest
Tuscan; "'tis I who am too soon. But even if you had caused me to wait
a little while, I should have felt quite sure that the delay was not
occasioned by any fault of yours."

"Your excellency is perfectly right in so thinking," said the man; "I
came here direct from the Castle of St. Angelo, and I had an immense
deal of trouble before I could get a chance to speak to Beppo."

"And who is Beppo?"

"Oh, Beppo is employed in the prison, and I give him so much a year to
let me know what is going on within his holiness's castle."

"Indeed! You are a prov