While we within the chamber were busily engaged in arranging my flight, the assisting Monks had been employed on the outside in repairing the broken wall and the wainscot, through which was the passage to my room; and they had performed their task so dexterously, that though to enter it from without was still easy, it was almost impossible for persons unacquainted with the mechanism to discover from within any door leading out of the apartment. Nothing however can be more simple than this secret. On the south-west side of our chamber, there runs a sort of frame of carved ornaments round a picture of the “Flight from Egypt.”—Count the seventh pomegranate from the bottom, and using some little strength to force it back, you will possess the key of the whole mystery. A slight push will make the pannel recede; a broad staircase of five-and-twenty steps will then present itself, and if you keep always to the right, you cannot possibly miss your way. Yet the passage is long, and fatigue or anxiety, lest you _should_ have mistaken the road, may give you much disquietude, should you traverse the caverns without a guide to comfort and sustain you. I advise you therefore only to escape alone, should you be in some most urgent danger. The good Hermit has promised also to watch over your safety; he will keep a spy continually in the Castle, who can inform him of all that happens to you; and (should he find it unavoidable for you to take so desperate a step as the quitting your father’s protection) then lest his unexpected appearance should seriously alarm you, he will prepare you for flight by a written warning, and afterwards assist you to carry his warning into effect. Yet in spite of these assurances, I could not resolve on parting from you, my beloved girl, without many a tear. I still loitered, wishing that I could at least leave some token behind me to convince you, that I was in safety, and thus spare you the anxiety, which doubtless my disappearance must have cost you. But my deliverers insisted, that any such measure was too pregnant with danger to be adopted, and at length I was compelled to obey and follow them.