the tools needed for making the hole in sides, with prints of the virgin and saints, the other cell. The prisoner calmly re- etc. And these he was to stick up all plied that he himself (the goaler) had about the sides of his cell, as for purposes furnished them to him. Then in answer of devotion; and behind one of these, to his adjurations and entreaties for explanation as to what the prisoner meant, and how he (Lorenzo) had supplied him with tools, he replied gravely that he would tell him, and would tell him with perfect truth; but that he would only do so in the presence of the Secretary!

constantly replaced so as to conceal the work, a hole was to be made by the monk in the side of his cell. There remained, however, the great difficulty of conveying the invaluable sharpened bolt to the monk, without which he had no means of even attempting the work. At last there seemed The unhappy goaler was checkmated, to be an opportunity of attempting this. cowed, and beaten. He ended by implor- It was a chance!-one involving treing his prisoner to say no word more upon mendous risk! But then every portion of the subject, and to remember that he was the scheme necessarily involved risks a poor man, who had a wife and family de- which offered only a small chance of ultipending upon him, and who would as-mate success; and if the thing was to be suredly be ruined by the discovery of attempted at all, it was useless to recoil what the prisoner had done, despite his before such chances. vigilance.

Thenceforward the relations between prisoner and goaler were more amicable. And the unlucky man began a course of indulgences, which eventually led to the escape of his captive.

Casanova begged for books to read. He had read all those that had been allowed to him. The goaler said that there was a prisoner in a neighbouring cell who had several books, which no doubt he would be willing to lend to his fellowprisoner.

The captive in the neighbouring cell turned out to be a monk, imprisoned for licentious conduct. He made no difficulty in lending his books. Casanova lent his in return. And thus a system of correspondence was readily established between

them.

Ever since Casanova's removal into his new cell, and the discovery of the hole in the floor of the old one, the goaler or his assistants had every morning sounded every part of the floor and walls of his prison. But he observed that they never thought of sounding the ceiling! He at once determined that it must be by that way alone that he could escape.

But how was it possible for him to get at the ceiling? or, even if he could do so, how could the long labour of making a hole through the solid woodwork of it be accomplished either in one day or without immediately attracting the attention of his goaler?

The scheme he hit upon was this. In the first place he communicated all his plans to his neighbouring prisoner the monk, and found him willing to join in an attempt at escape. Then he instructed him to cause the goaler to buy for him several of the ordinary devotional broad

One of the volumes lent by the monk to Casanova was a large folio, bound in parchment loose at the back, in the fashion in which old books, especially Italian books, are often seen. Casanova tried to conceal the bolt inside the binding of the back of this book. The weapon was too long! It protruded nearly an inch at either end! Nevertheless his powers of invention were not yet finally conquered. Some festival occurred, on which a certain sort of cake, or pudding, of maccaroni, made with much oil, was usually eaten. Casanova told the gaoler that he wished, in return for the kindness received from his neighbour prisoner, to send him and the companion in his cell (for there was another prisoner in the monk's cell, a certain Conte Asquin, an old and immensely fat man,) a dish of maccaroni for the festival, prepared by his own hands. He furnished the money necessary for buying the different articles, and then saying that he meant to do the thing as handsomely as possible, begged the gaoler to bring him the largest dish he could get. The manner was, it seems, to prepare maccaroni after this fashion in one of those very large, flat, shallow copper dishes, which are still so frequently seen in Italy. All the preparations were accomplished according to the prisoner's wishes. He prepared his plat, taking especial care that the dish should be filled with oil to the very brim, so that it could only be carried with great care, and in the most perfect equilibrium. Then he placed it on the folio with the precious bolt in it, sticking out at either end, but not so far as not to be hidden by the dish. Then, when the gaoler came, he told him to take the book and the dish together into the neighbouring cell. He put them himself into the

The first step, however, after they had got on to the top of the cell, through the hole which the monk had made, presented no great difficulty. This was to rip open a sufficient portion of the leaden roofing The "Pozzi,"-literally "wells," are a range of the Palace to allow them to pass out on of prisons, yet more terrible than the " Piombi, to the roof; and by the help of the sharp- Palace, without light, and accessible only by a dark constructed among the foundations of the Ducal ened bolt this was readily accomplished. stair leading from the first floor of the Palace, and To reach the ridge of the roof was a mat- by a little postern on the level of the Canal, underneath the "Bridge of Sighs," by which the bodies ter of much greater difficulty. It had been of executed criminals, and of those who died there, necessary to wait till midnight before get-venice, the assemblies of its senators and stateswere removed. Thus, the gorgeous public life of ting on to the roof, because it was a bright men, the stately ceremonial of its receptions, were moonlight night: all Venice would be all transacted with despair and wailing over their walking on the Square of St. Mark; the heads, and despair and wailing under their feet!

than to climb up it. Casanova let him- window, and to pull it onwards till the self slide down, trusting to his power of end struck against the roof of the window directing himself forwards and being in the inside. In this position it is easy to pulled up by the little roof of the win- understand that no amount of force could dow. He succeeded in this. Then lying make it enter further, save by raising the along the ridge of this little roof on his other end, which projected far beyond the stomach, with his legs extended up the extreme edge of the roof of the Palace. slope of the main roof above it, he pro- There was nothing for it, therefore, but to jected his head far enough over the edge attempt this. Casanova let himself slip of the roof of the window to see that it down on his stomach till the toes of his was a small window of little panes set in feet rested against the outside of the marlead, and protected by an iron grating. ble gutter which forms the cornice of the Of course the window mattered little. roof, the toes only, for the gutter 'was But the iron grating? too shallow to admit of more. In this position he strove to raise the ladder, having, as will be understood, a strong leverage against him, inasmuch as the part projecting beyond the fulcrum formed by his hand was much longer than that between his hand and the other end inside the window.

With infinite labour, at the most frightful risk of being precipitated into the Canal below, and with hands lacerated and bleeding, Casanova, after a quarter of an hour's work, succeeded in wrenching the grating from the wall with his trusty sharpened bolt. Then he returned to the spot on the main ridge of the roof where While using his utmost effort to accomhe had left his companion, who received plish this, he raised himself on his knees him with a torrent of imprecations for in order to exert more strength; his toes having been so long absent. Neverthe- slipped, and he was launched over the less, he continued to labour for his escape edge of the roof, till, by one of those inas well as for his own. Having succeeded stinctive and despairing efforts of which a in getting the monk on the roof of the man is capable only in similar desperate now open little window, it was not very circumstances, he found himself arrested difficult for one of the two to be let down in his downward course by the clinging through the window by means of the cord of his elbows to the cavity of the gutter. by the other. But how was the second to "A horrible moment," he says, writing follow? The monk absolutely refused to many years afterwards when an old man, help Casanova to descend. The latter," at which I still shudder, and which it is, therefore, tied the cord round the body of the former, and succeeded in letting him down till he reached a floor. They found that the distance from the window to the floor was at least fifty feet. And now Casanova was alone on the roof, utterly at a loss to find the means of rejoining his companion. At last, after much search, he discovered on a remote part of the roof a ladder left there by workmen. With considerable labour and difficulty he succeeded in dragging it to the little ridge roof over the small garret window. But then came the question how, unaided by any other hand, he was to get one end of the long ladder in at the window. Below the window, it is to be understood, there was nothing save a few yards of very steeply sloping leads, a narrow stone cornice gutter, and then-the sheer fall of some two hundred feet into the Canal below! The extreme difficulty and peril of the operation to be performed may be readily conceived!

perhaps, impossible to imagine in all its horror. The natural instinct of preservation caused me, almost without knowing what I was doing, to exert my utmost strength to cling on, and -I am almost tempted to say miraculously—I succeeded."

Lacerated, bleeding, trembling, streaming with perspiration at every pore, he did succeed in regaining his position on the roof. The effort, which had so nearly cost him his life, had pushed the ladder three or four feet further into the window; and the remainder of the task of rejoining the monk on the floor of the room into which the window opened was comparatively easy.

As also was the remainder of his escape from the Palace. There were a few doors to be broken open, but the trusty weapon which had already stood him in such good stead, soon disposed of them. And in that vast building at that hour of the night, and especially just at that time of the year, when it was the habit of VenePerched on the roof of the garret win-tian officers of state to take a few days' dow, however, he did contrive, by the aid holiday at their estates on the mainland, of his cord of bedclothes, to get one end there was little danger of any noise being of the ladder into the aperture of the heard.

This, after a variety of adventures and hair-breadth escapes, which cannot here be related at length, he succeeded in accomplishing.

After the breaking, more or less difficult, | dominions of Venice from those of the of a few doors, the fugitives found them- Bishop of Trent. selves at the head of the great staircase, so well known to travellers, which leads from the great corridor, running round the interior of the court of the Palace on the first floor. Thence the way was perfectly open to them to the head of the yet better known "giant" stairs, and at the foot of them to the main door of the Palace. This was shut and locked, because it was not yet the hour at which it was opened in the morning. It stands always open all day, but Casanova judged that it was wisest not to wait for that hour of the morning. Having first repaired as well as he could the mischief done both to his flesh and his clothes by the various incidents of his escape which it was not so easy to do, for both clothes and limbs were torn to bits and covered with blood, but he had still the bundle containing his wardrobe with him -he showed himself at one of the grated windows looking from the court on to the piazza.

Before leaving Mestre he found himself face to face with a "sbirro," or officer in the employment of the Inquisition, who knew him personally and knew that he aught then to have been in the "piombi " of the Ducal Palace. Fortunately the spot was solitary, and he escaped by menacing the life of the officer. This danger, as well as many others, was brought upon him by the selfishness, cowardice, and imbecility of the monk his companion, whom nevertheless he would not desert (much to his honour, if his own account is to be credited) till he saw him safe and provided for in Germany. One night he passed in the house of a chief officer of the police of the Inquisition, who was absent from home scouring the country in search of him, and to whose wife he represented that he was a friend of her husband.

At Munich he found friends who took him with them to Paris, where, as ever, he once more fell on his legs, and began a new course of very extraordinary adventures, of which by no means the least curious was that which made him, about eighteen years subsequently, a "confidant "

i.e. spy and informer of the Tribunal, whose means of action he stigmatizes as infamous, when they were exerted against himself.

Then some early passer-by saw him, and went to tell the porter that there was a man locked up in the court. Casanova says that, dressed as he was, he looked just like a man who had left a ball and passed the rest of the night in debauchery and disorder. The monk was dressed like a peasant. Placing himself close to the door, with the monk behind him, and grasping his sharpened bolt in his hand, thoroughly determined to strike the porter down with it if he should The special business for the sake of make any resistance to his exit, he which he was in the first instance emawaited the opening of the door; and ployed was the difficult and delicate one the instant it was opened glided through of preventing certain Armenian monks, it on to the open piazza. The porter who had separated themselves from the seemed too much struck with amazement well-known Armenian convent existing on to do aught but stand agape and stare, one of the islands of the lagoon under the so there was no need for violence; and Casanova and his companion, passing quickly to the "riva" of the "piazzetta," had no difficulty in finding a couple of gondoliers to take them to Mestre.

But the escaped prisoner knew too well the ways of the power against which he was trying the resources of his courage and wit, to imagine for an instant that he was really free till he had placed himself on the further side of the frontier of the territory of the Republic; and the nearest point at which this could be accomplished was the boundary separating the

protection of Venice, from obtaining an establishment at Trieste. This he accomplished to the satisfaction of his employers; and his communications with the terrible Tribunal on the subject are sufficiently curious to be worth condensing from the highly interesting volumes of records which Signor Bazzoni has made known to historical students.

But this paper has already run to too great a length for it to be possible to attempt doing so on the present occasion.