The lower part of his dress was more distinctly visible by the bright rays of the moon, which, entering through the broken ceiling, shed their refulgent beams on feet cased in elegantly made boots of polished leather, over which descended fashionably cut trousers of black cloth.
From the imperfect means Franz had of judging, he could only come to one conclusion,--that the person whom he was thus watching certainly belonged to no inferior station of life.

Some few minutes had elapsed, and the stranger began to show manifest signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard outside the aperture in the roof, and almost immediately a dark shadow seemed to obstruct the flood of light that had entered it, and the figure of a man was clearly seen gazing with eager scrutiny on the immense space beneath him; then, as his eye caught sight of him in the mantle, he grasped a floating mass of thickly matted boughs, and glided down by their help to within three or four feet of the ground, and then leaped lightly on his feet.

The man who had performed this daring act with so much indifference wore the Transtevere costume.

"I beg your excellency's pardon for keeping you waiting," said the man, in the Roman dialect, "but I don't think I'm many minutes after my time, ten o'clock has just struck on the Lateran." "Say not a word about being late," replied the stranger in purest Tuscan; "'tis I who am too soon.

But even if you had caused me to wait a little while, I should have felt quite sure that the delay was not occasioned by any fault of yours." "Your excellency is perfectly right in so thinking," said the man; "I came here direct from the Castle of St.Angelo, and I had an immense deal of trouble before I could get a chance to speak to Beppo." "And who is Beppo ?" "Oh, Beppo is employed in the prison, and I give him so much a year to let me know what is going on within his holiness's castle." "Indeed! You are a provident person, I see." "Why, you see, no one knows what may happen.