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The moon would set at eleven and sunrise was at six, so we had seven hours of perfect darkness at our service; and though we had a hard task, I considered that in seven hours it would be accomplished. I told Father Balbi that we could pass the three hours in talking to Count Asquin.
I, Marin Balbi, who write to you, am a Venetian of high birth, and a regular cleric, and my companion is Count Andre Asquin, of Udine, the capital of Friuli.
He did not find Count Asquin there, as the Tribunal, out of consideration for his great age, had moved him to The Fours a couple of months after our escape. Five or six years later, I heard that the Tribunal, after keeping the unlucky monk for two years under the Leads, had sent him to his convent.
Treason of Soradaci How I Get the Best of Him Father Balbi Ends His Work I Escape from My Cell Unseasonable Observations of Count Asquin The Critical Moment Soradaci had had my letters for two or three days when Lawrence came one afternoon to take him to the secretary. As he was several hours away, I hoped to see his face no more; but to my great astonishment he was brought back in the evening.
I wrote and told him that I was not at all inclined to put my trust in Nicolas, and that my secret was one not to be imparted in writing. However, I was amused by his letters. In one of them he told me why Count Asquin was kept under the Leads, in spite of his helplessness, for he was enormously fat, and as he had a broken leg which had been badly set he could hardly put one foot before another.
The moon would set at eleven and sunrise was at six, so we had seven hours of perfect darkness at our service; and though we had a hard task, I considered that in seven hours it would be accomplished. I told Father Balbi that we could pass the three hours in talking to Count Asquin.
I constrained myself, therefore, and as politely as I could I told them that I was sure of success, though I could not as yet communicate the details of my plan. "I shall profit by your wise counsels," said I to Count Asquin, "and be very prudent, but my trust in God and in my own strength will carry me through all difficulties."
The last of these shuttle-cock moves occurred on July 31, from our field at Pont Asquin back to St. Hilaire, whose billets few of us were anxious to revisit. It is already dusk as the sanitary men, like so many sorcerers, stoop in the final rites of fire and burial.
I told him that I had a pike twenty inches long, and with this tool he must pierce the ceiling of his cell next the wall which separated us, and he would then be above my head; his next step would be to make a hole in the ceiling of my cell and aid me to escape by it. "Here your task will end and mine will begin, and I will undertake to set both you and Count Asquin at liberty."
The writer of the Latin letter was the monk Balbi, imprisoned in the Leads with a companion, Count André Asquin. He followed it by a much longer one, giving the history of his own life, and all that he knew of his fellow-prisoners.
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