Don Agostino looked at him in amazement.
"Are you joking, my friend?" he exclaimed.
"Niente affatto! It is as I say. There is a secret passage in the inside wall, dividing the whole length of the piano nobile which their excellencies occupy from the outer gallery. It is in the thickness of the wall itself, so nobody suspects its existence."
"Perbacco!" ejaculated Don Agostino. "And the entrance to the passage?"
"It is by a trap-door in the floor of a room in the basement—a little room close to the outer gateway, which has long been uninhabited. My own apartment opens out of it on one side, but the door of communication was blocked up years ago—before I can remember. Sicuro! the entrance to the passage is there, and a narrow staircase leads up to the piano nobile above."
"And the egress," asked Don Agostino, eagerly; "where is that, Signor Fontana?"
Sor Beppe's white teeth gleamed from behind his dark beard. "That is the strange part of it," he replied. "The passage leads directly into the room at the extreme end of the piano nobile, the room in which the principessina sleeps. The princess's room is next to it, and there is no other means of entry visible, except by passing through this. No doubt the princess chose it for Donna Bianca's sleeping apartment as being more secure. But, as I say, anybody acquainted with the passage could enter it."
"By a trap-door in the floor?" Don Agostino asked.
Sor Beppe shook his head. "By a much more artistic contrivance," he replied—"absolutely artistic, you understand. On pressing a spring in the passage a door slides back noiselessly into a groove in the wall of the bedroom. Ah, but those who made it were artists! The door is covered by a picture, the frame of which is so contrived as completely to conceal the groove into which it slides. A person might inhabit the room for a lifetime and not be aware that there was any means of entering or leaving it, except through the adjoining apartment."
Don Agostino leaned back in his chair and gazed at Fontana in silence. What he had just heard did not very much surprise him. He knew an old Medicean villa in Tuscany in which a secret entrance existed almost similar to that described by Sor Beppe, although it was not in so serviceable a state as its counterpart at Montefiano appeared to be. Perhaps the late Prince Montefiano had restored and repaired this one for purposes of his own. However that might be, the main point was that here, under his hand, if Sor Beppe was not romancing, was the very opportunity he had been searching for, to convey Silvio's packet to Bianca Acorari. Don Agostino felt almost bewildered at the way in which difficulties, which appeared at one moment to be insurmountable, were removed. No doubt, he argued to himself, this fresh situation was nothing but a coincidence. There was no reason why a mediæval fortress such as Montefiano, to which a Renaissance palace has been attached, should not have a dozen secret passages concealed in its walls. But it was, at any rate, a very fortunate circumstance, and one which, cautiously made use of, might considerably assist the ends he had in view.