He had also closed the window and was now pacing up and down his room in slow strides. "It's good," he said, "it fits well into my plans. If it should come to the worst, I'll be able to use it to my advantage as well."
The expression of his face proved that a love-affair was the furthest thing from his mind.
Now, he unpacked the portmanteau, which contained only little laundry and a few prayer-books, and put everything into the cupboard, standing by the wall. One of the books fell to the floor, and the stone plate made a hollow sound. Instantly, he put out the light, locked the door, and started to examine the floor more closely in the dusk created by the distant shimmer of Smeraldina's lamp. After some work, he succeeded in lifting the stone plate, which had been lodged into place to fit precisely, but without the use of any mortar, and he discovered a rather spacious hole underneath, as deep as the size of a hand and one foot wide in both directions. Swiftly, he threw off his outer garments and removed a heavy belt with several pockets, which he had worn around his waist. He had already placed it inside the hole, when he suddenly stopped to think. "No," he said, "it could be a trap. It wouldn't be the first time for the police to have such hiding places in rented apartments, to know later on, when searching the premises, where they'd have to poke at. This is just too enticingly arranged to be trustworthy."
He lowered the stone plate back into its place and searched for a safe container for his secrets. The window to the blind alley had bars in front of it, wide enough for an arm to fit through. He opened it, reached outside, and groped along the wall. Directly under the ledge, he found a small hole in the wall, which bats seemed to have inhabited in the past. It could not be noticed from below, and from above, it was covered by the ledge. Without making a noise, he widened the opening with his dagger, breaking out mortar and bricks, and soon, his work had progressed so far that he could easily fit the wide belt inside. When he was finished, his brow was covered with cold sweat. Once again, he tried to feel, whether there was no strap or buckle hanging out of the hole, and then he closed the window. One hour later, he lay, still fully dressed, on the bed and slept. The gnats were buzzing over his face, the birds of the night were curiously flapping about the hole outside, in which his treasure lay hidden. But the sleeping man's lips were closed too tightly, to betray any word of his secrets, even in his dreams.
The same night, a man was sitting in Verona by his lonely lamp and was unfolding, after having carefully locked the shutters and the door, a letter, which had been secretly handed to him today in the dusk by a Capuchin begging for alms, while he had been promenading near the amphitheatre. The letter bore no external inscription. But being asked how the messenger would know that he was putting the letter into the right hands, the monk had answered: "Every child in Verona knows the noble Angelo Querini like his own father." Having said this, the messenger had left. But the banished man, whose exile had been eased by the respect which had followed him into his misfortune, had managed to bring the letter back to his lodgings, unnoticed by the spies watching him, and he now read, while the steps of the guard in front of the house echoed menacingly through the silence, the following lines:
"To Angelo Querini.
"I have no reason to hope that you will remember the fleeting hour, when I met you in person. Many years have passed since then. I had grown up with my sister and my brother in the rural peace of our estate in Friaul; only after I had lost both of my parents, I left my sister and my younger brother. After just a few days, the seductive maelstrom of Venice had swallowed me whole.
"Then, one day, I was introduced to you in Morosini Palace. I still feel your glance, examining us young folks, one after another. Your eyes said: `and this is supposed to be the generation on whose shoulders the future of Venice shall rest?' - You were told my name. Unnoticed by the others, you turned the conversation with me to the great history of the state, to which my ancestors had devoted their services. Kindly, you failed to mention the present and the services which I still owed this state.
"Since that conversation, I read day and night in a book, which in the past I had not even regarded worthy of a single glance, the history of my native country. The result of these studies was that I, driven by horror and disgust, left this city forever, which used to rule over foreign countries and seas, but was now the slave of a deplorable tyranny, being as powerless in external affairs as it is internally miserable and violent.
"I returned to my siblings. I succeeded in warning my brother, in revealing the corruption of life to him, which seemed to be shining so brightly when seen from afar. But I never thought that everything I did to save him and us was to destroy us just the more surely.