Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~ = - iene a i he eRe hate a= ; Y. al FS ~ re % ee ae vs aaphies | | - -RAPAEL SABATINI assurance. He enjoined the monk to believe him, and to persevere, confident that as he advanced he would find progress easier. This proved, indeed, to be the case, for soon Balbi found the brickwork yielding so rapidly to his efforts that one morning, a week later, Casanova heard three light taps above his head—the preconcerted signal by which they were to assure themselves that their notions of the topography of the prison were correct. All that day he heard Balbi at work immediately above him, and again on the morrow, when Balbi wrote that as the floor was of the thickness of only two boards, he counted upon completing the job on the next day, without piercing the ceiling. But it would seem as if Fortune were intent upon making a mock of Casanova, 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 new- - comer 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 univer- sally—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 Gomichbooks (E@)