They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just
outside my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole through
the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes on the following
reasons.
"Every time that the jailer came with my food, there was light enough
to read directions written on the walls--'Side of the Palace,' 'Side
of the Canal,' 'Side of the Vaults.' At last I saw a design in this,
but I did not trouble myself much about the meaning of it; the actual
incomplete condition of the Ducal Palace accounted for it. The longing
to regain my freedom gave me something like genius. Groping about with
my fingers, I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the wall. The
author of the work informed those to come after him that he had loosed
two stones in the lowest course of masonry and hollowed out eleven
feet beyond underground. As he went on with his excavations, it became
necessary to spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor
of his cell. But even if jailers and inquisitors had not felt sure
that the structure of the building was such that no watch was needed
below, the level of the Pozzi dungeons being several steps below the
threshold, it was possible gradually to raise the earthen floor
without exciting the warder's suspicions.
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