The rain fell with redoubled force, and Benvenuto's heart leaped for joy as he heard it heating against the window.
He at once tried to remove the iron plates; as there was nothing to hold them, they yielded to his efforts, and he placed them, one by one, against the wall.
He then lay flat upon the floor, and attacked the bottom of the door with his modelling tool, sharpened like a dagger, and fitted to a wooden handle. The oak was entirely changed to carbon, and gave way at the first touch.
In an instant Benvenuto had made, an aperture at the bottom of the door sufficiently large to allow him to crawl through it. He reopened the belly of his statue, took out the strips of linen, coiled them around his waist like a girdle, armed himself with his modelling tool, of which he had, as we have said, made a dagger, and fell on his knees once more and prayed.
Then he passed his head through the hole, then his shoulders, then the rest of his body, and found himself in the corridor.
He stood erect; but his legs trembled so that he was compelled to lean against the wall for support. His heart was beating as if it would burst, and his head was on fire. A drop of perspiration trembled at the end of each hair, and he clutched the handle of his dagger in his hand, as if some one were trying to tear it away from him.
However, as everything was quiet, as nothing was stirring and not a sound was to be heard, Benvenuto soon recovered himself, and felt his way along the wall of the corridor with his hand, until the wall came to an end. Then he put out his foot and felt the first step of the staircase, or, more properly speaking, the ladder, which led to the platform.
He mounted the rungs, one by one, shivering as the wood creaked under his feet, until he felt a breath of air; then the rain beat against his faee as his head rose above the level of the platform, and as he had been in most intense darkness for a quarter of an hour, he was able to judge at once what reason he had to fear or hope.
The balance seemed to incline toward hope.
The sentinel had taken refuge from the storm in his sentry-box. How, as the sentinels who mounted guard upon the castle of San Angelo were stationed there, not to inspect the platform, but to look down into the moat and survey the surrounding country, the closed side of the sentry-box faced the top of the ladder by which Benvenuto ascended.