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That second volume came on the next day, and in the spine of it a long letter, some sheets of paper, pens, and a pencil. The writer announced himself as one Marino Balbi, a patrician and a monk, who had been four years in that prison, where he had since been given a companion in misfortune, Count Andrea Asquino.
So they returned to the cell where they had left Soradici with Count Asquino. From Balbi, Casanova had learnt that Asquino, though well supplied with money, was of an avaricious nature. Nevertheless, since money would be necessary, Casanova asked the Count for the loan of thirty gold sequins.
1 Burchard's Diarium, March 6, 1504. Now if Asquino defamed the memory of Cardinal Michieli it seems to follow naturally that he had hated the cardinal; and, if we know that he hated him, we need not marvel that, out of that hatred, he poisoned him.
The bundle containing Balbi's clothes, and another made up of half the rope, he slung from the monk's neck, thereafter doing the same in his own case. Then, in their shirt-sleeves, their hats on their heads, the pair of them started on their perilous journey, leaving Count Asquino and Soradici to pray for them.
The proceedings instituted against Sebastiano Pinzone were of a piece with those instituted against Asquino de Colloredo and others yet to be considered; they were set on foot by Giuliano della Rovere that implacable enemy of the House of Borgia when he became Pope, for the purpose of heaping ignominy upon the family of his predecessor. But that shall be further dealt with presently.
Asquino answered him gently that, in the first place, they would not need money to escape; that, in the second, he had a numerous family; that, in the third, if Casanova perished the money would be lost; and that, in the fourth, he had no money. "My reply," writes Casanova, "lasted half an hour."
Leaving Soradici in the monk's care, Casanova hoisted himself through the broken ceiling and gained Balbi's cell, where the sight of Count Asquino dismayed him. He found a middle-aged man of a corpulence which must render it impossible for him to face the athletic difficulties that lay before them; of this the Count himself seemed already persuaded.
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