The first I knew of Signor Andrea’s craftmanship was when Eugenio, after satisfying himself first that the grating at the window seemed strong, and second, that I lacked nothing of the ordinary creature comforts, barred and locked my door carefully from the outside, then retired with his two mates a considerable distance down the passageway. The songs and laughter from them soon told how Giovanna and Benedetta, well-known ladies of the servants’ hall, were with them, and I suspected they were not without wherewithal to drink. The loud crashing of music from the state chambers was all in our favor. I caught next the rattle of a rope against the outer wall, and Andrea was swinging on his loops again across the window. Once a good chisel had been passed to me inside, and what with Andrea working without, it did not take two active men long to force the base of the bar, especially as the iron had not been let very deeply into the stone, and with the lower end once free I twisted the whole clear in a twinkling. I piled the chair and table against the door, for what proved a needless precaution, and Andrea held out his hand to me. “All is ready, Eccellenza,” he whispered. “For Germany, then,” I answered. The opening was narrow, but my slight figure writhed through without too much difficulty. The black wall yawned below me; above I could only see the blinking stars, but it was no moment for squeamish stomachs or hesitancy. Andrea had clambered up before me. I closed my eyes and felt for the loops. There was a nervously long interval of clutching and swinging ere my hands closed over the tiles of the roof, but they were quickly gained, and a lantern dimly burning at an opening showed us whither to clamber with what speed, yet silence, we might. A sliding door, then a ladder, a small room where Andrea quickly cast over me the cloak and biretta of a seedy genteel townsman of Tuscany, and again I was following him. He himself had adopted a similar guise. Knowing the labyrinthian corridors and galleries of the palazzo far better than I, he had no difficulty in conducting me through the vast building without encountering a soul. Once I paused for an instant at a balcony overlooking the great hall. The candles were burning low, but the musicians were still sustaining the throb of the dance. Around and around in graceful mazes went Marianna, pirouetting before the admiring Campelli. Upon a time I would have been close to murder on seeing another showing her favors, but I was past all such moving now. “Will it be he, who will console her?” I asked of myself with curling lip, “or the Spaniard Don Velasco, or the Milanese Conte di Tempori?” And then I turned to Andrea: “Lead on. We are going where things are real.”